There is no standard or uniform peak season for ports globally. This is typical during festival season and translates into higher volumes and places greater strain on carrier capacity and cargo handling infrastructure at ports.Īt such times, due to the heavier than usual flow of cargo, ports take longer to handle vessels, leading to longer port stay for vessels, which in turn delays the vessels waiting in the queue behind them, ultimately cascading into delays at subsequent port calls. There are certain times of the year when consumer demand for goods and products is much higher than usual. Any adverse weather conditions such as hurricanes, storms etc will delay the vessel and cause it to arrive beyond its scheduled time.Įven while at berth, if climatic conditions are rough, loading and unloading activities will be suspended, causing a delay in the vessel leaving the port, thus prolonging its journey to the subsequent ports of call. Vessels sailing on the high seas are exposed to the vagaries of weather through most of their journey. The weather is perhaps the most important reason for disrupted schedules. In this article, we will examine the most common causes of poor schedule reliability, and vessel and delivery delays. What this effectively means is that Container Carriers already have an error margin of 2 days, without the vessel call being counted amongst the delayed ones.īeing perhaps the most visible element of the transport chain, a lion’s share of the blame for these delays is attributed to Container Carriers however in reality there are a host of diverse factors at play, all of which either singly or in combination with other factors, contribute majorly to the tardy pace of delivery. This is all the more surprising, considering that timely delivery in most cases is defined as being “plus or minus 1 day from the scheduled date of the call (at the port)”. Over the past year, in the Covid and post-Covid scenario, even this low benchmark has become a pipe dream, with the container shipping industry’s overall schedule reliability levels having fallen through the floor, recording an abysmal 33% in August 2021. The average reliability of container shipping lines has historically hovered around the 66% mark, implying that only 2 in 3 vessels arrive as per schedule a number that would be considered unacceptable in most other industries. As per World Economic Forum statistics, approximately 60% of this is transported in containers.Ĭonsidering the overwhelming reliance of global transport on the shipping industry, there is always a lot of focus on the reliability of shipping services.Ĭontainer shipping, in particular, is under the spotlight at the moment, given that since Covid started wreaking havoc across the world in 2020, vessels have been constantly delayed and carriers have for the most part been unable to adhere to their published sailing schedules. Maritime transport is crucial for international trade, as it carries over 90% of the world’s goods.
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