Well-designed schedules

Tuesday, 26 February 2008

ONCE again, the overall standard of time-keeping on the north Europe/East coast South America (ECSA) trade was very high, meaning that shippers are generally getting an excellent service at bargain prices.
As usual there were niggling delays at regional ports during our 20-week survey period, but the situation does appear to have improved measurably since last year.

Also, while the situation in European ports is still not ideal, due largely to the impact of the booming import trade from the Far East, our research reveals that on the ECSA trade lane, the European rotation rarely took over a day more than scheduled, giving time to recover on the southbound voyage.
The base ports of Santos, Buenos Aires and Montevideo used in this survey are the same as in recent years and their selection is aimed at giving a fair average across more than one port, as most operations include at least two of the three.

Reviewing the various strings in this trade suggests that most lines operate to well-designed schedules, allowing enough time to smooth out small delays at both ends of the trade.
The only one of the fixed-day carriers whose schedule appeared rather too tight for comfort was Mediterranean Shipping Co (MSC), which recorded a days-late average higher than its rivals at Santos and Buenos Aires (based on arrival dates scheduled on its main website). It also omitted a large number of calls at Rotterdam and a few at Bremerhaven – on three occasions in the survey window, its ships only called at Antwerp.

However, for most other carriers, keeping on schedule did come with a price, that being the need to skip port calls on occasions.

Maersk used its safety valve of omitting Sepetiba on several occasions in the survey window, and this almost invariably kept arrivals at both Santos and Buenos Aires to the scheduled day. However, the Montevideo call was a different story, as arrival is scheduled the day after Buenos Aires, but ships tended to spend longer then expected at the Argentine port; also, one Montevideo call was skipped.

Unfortunately, the Maersk result has been largely irrelevant since the restructuring of its network in the autumn. For the same reason, there is no result for the new SAMEX loop.

The EUSA grouping had only one ship running late for a southbound voyage (CSCL Fuzhou in July), but got back on track by skipping three calls, including Santos southbound and Montevideo, while another ship spent three days in Buenos Aires and consequently skipped Montevideo. There was no sailing one week, but as this was during the phase-in period, it cannot be termed a negative.

The only real problem for the VSA4 grouping was a problem with the CSAV Rio Maule, which had to spend over a week for repairs in Hamburg in both May and August. The partners speeded-up the following ship in the schedule on both occasions calling at Rotterdam only, and omitting Paranaguá.
However, one of those speeded-up ships still arrived at Santos four days late, having been diverted to Rio first, spoiling what might otherwise have been a winning performance.

Skipped calls were rare on both the Hamburg Süd/Aliança/CMA CGM/Hapag-Lloyd loops – the few exceptions including one Montevideo call on the Plate Express string in late August, and a couple of northbound Santos calls on the Brazil Express.

Delays did tend to get picked up along the Atlantic coast on this operation, with a near-perfect record at the first southbound port of call (Sepetiba), but with the average days late increasing as the ships proceeded to Santos, Buenos Aires and Montevideo (based respectively on Tuesday, Friday and Sunday arrivals).

The Brazil Express loop could not be included in the table, as it does not offer a southbound service to any of the three base ports. However, at the second Brazilian port of call, Itajaí, the average was an impressive 0.15 calendar days.

As with last year’s survey, the high incidence of cancelled calls complicated the punctuality ranking of the monitored operations (the Grimaldi operation was not monitored as its does not run to a fixed-day schedule), and there are four strong candidates for the schedule reliability crown.

The Maersk Line/[Safmarine] “L” class operation was extremely impressive to Santos and Buenos Aires, but was let down by its higher average at Montevideo. For the same reason, the Hamburg Süd/Aliança/[CMA CGM]/[Hapag-Lloyd] Plate Express (last year’s winner) loses out.

Even allowing for the omission of two Montevideo calls, the new operation of the EUSA grouping turned out to be the best time-keeper at the River Plate ports. Yet with Santos skipped on one occasion, it is not possible to name the partners as Star Performers for the trade as a whole.

Consequently, the trade has been split into two sections for this purpose, with this four (CSCL, “K” Line, Evergreen and Maruba) taking the Plate Estuary award, and Maersk Line the one for Brazil, based on Santos arrivals.

As far as transit times from the UK are concerned, the lack of direct operations has seriously limited the competition. It is thus the usual two-horse race between Maersk Line/[Safmarine] and Hamburg Süd and partners.

For the third year running, Maersk Line/[Safmarine] come out on top, and although it was a very closely fought race, the recent restructuring of the “L” class loop, with its astonishingly fast times to Santos and Montevideo, should stand the pair in good stead for next year’s survey.

Incidentally, the inclusion of Safmarine in the Star Performer box for transit times but not for schedule reliability may look odd, but is in line with Liner Analysis practice. This is because Safmarine is a formal partner of Maersk Line in this trade, but not involved in the operation of the ships deployed on the “L” class loop.

One final note: monitored transit times from Benelux ports will not be included in this and future surveys, but scheduled times from selected continental ports for operations which do not call in the UK are provided in the transit time table.