Leading Danish shipping giant, Maersk Line, is among the top four shipping lines notorious for arriving very late to ports, checks by shipping firm consultancy, Sea-Intelligence, has revealed.
While Wan Hai, CMA-CGM, Hapag Lloyd and Evergreen tops the ranking of shipping lines with improved schedule reliability in the first quarter (Q1) 2024 report, PIL, Yang Ming, HMM and Maersk Line tops the first four shipping lines notorious for lateness to ports.
The report read, “The Danish shipping group’s vessels only arrived in port on time for just under half of the departures. This is a drop of 16.1 percent compared to the fourth quarter of 2023.
“The decline is the largest of all the major shipping companies and drops Maersk all the way down to number 10 out of 13.
“The shipping company is usually at the very top of the ranking. The many delays come at an inconvenient time for the shipping group.
“In less than a year, Maersk will launch a new collaboration with German competitor, Hapag-Lloyd, where punctuality is in focus. The new alliance, where the shipping companies share space on each other’s ships, is called Gemini Cooperation.
“Quite remarkably, it promises its customers a punctuality rate of 90 percent, which is significantly higher than both companies’ figures for the first quarter, when Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd achieved a punctuality rate of 49 percent and 52 percent.”
In general, all major shipping companies have experienced a significant decline in schedule reliability in the first quarter, according to figures from Sea-Intelligence.
This is due to the crisis in the Red Sea, where the Houthi movement has attacked ships to show its opposition to Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza.
The attacks have prompted shipping companies to direct their ships south of Africa instead of sailing through the Suez Canal on their way from Asia to Europe.
This adds up to 14 days to the travel time and has naturally led to delays in shipping schedules.
The problem was particularly pronounced in January, according to Sea-Intelligence, which says that shipping companies began to improve their punctuality in February and March as they adapted to the new situation.
Looking at individual routes, Maersk has a particularly hard time being on time on the transatlantic routes.
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