Commendable results for schedule reliability

This year’s review of liner performance in the North Europe/South America Atlantic coast (ECSA) trade is very satisfying indeed, with a commendable set of results for schedule reliability.

There is little to criticise here, with the six fixed-day operations that were monitored all averaging under a day late overall at our ECSA base ports during the late-April to mid-September survey window – although in some cases this did require the omission of one or two port calls to make up time.

The problems that used to cause frequent delays at many of the region’s ports have been largely resolved, although odd setbacks do arise from time to time. The only really serious one in the weeks covered by this review was a strike at Buenos Aires, which affected ships calling or scheduled to call in the latter part of August.

Among the operations hit by this industrial action was the main MSC loop – coinciding with the call by the largest-ever containership visitor to the port, the 6,700teu MSC Laura. The publicity surrounding her maiden call at Suape in Brazil was not mirrored in Argentina, where she was held up for eight days, which meant that MSC had to push her into a later schedule position on her next southbound sailing.

Maersk’s ‘L’ class loop was also affected, as Luna Maersk was forced to skip the Buenos Aires call that week, sailing straight to Montevideo instead.

There were several other instances of ports being skipped, generally due to ships running late. These included no less than five calls at Montevideo on the Hamburg Süd-operated RPX, and the removal of the River Plate section of the CSAV/Libra/Maruba service on one sailing.

Our Brazilian base port, Santos, was also skipped occasionally on southbound sailings – MSC by-passed it a couple of times on its main loop, while Maersk also did so on one occasion in September.

The old CMA CGM/Maruba SAFRAN service also missed a few calls, although as it has now been lost in the lines’ rationalisation with Hamburg Süd, Aliança and Hapag-Lloyd, this is largely academic.

It did, however, affect the overall result of CMA CGM and Maruba, whose replacement service with Hapag-Lloyd scored 100% at Santos on its first five sailings, the only ones that fell within our survey window.

Taking the 20-week survey period as a whole, it is difficult to choose between the best-performing operators, although Hamburg Süd (and Aliança, which was operating one of the ‘Monte’ ships) stood out for the timekeeping of the RPX at Santos, and Maersk Line for its ‘L’ class operation at the River Plate ports.

Also in contention is Hapag-Lloyd, whose old Brazil Express service (jointly run with Hamburg Süd and Aliança) did not call at our base ports, but had a very respectable result at Paranaguá (following this up with the replacement service with CMA CGM and Maruba mentioned above). Consequently, Hapag-Lloyd, Hamburg Süd, Aliança and Maersk are all listed as Star Performers.

With the expansion of the number of direct services from the UK, the transit time category has widened, but of the continuing operations, two merit further mention.

First is the Hamburg Süd/Aliança RPX operation, whose times from Tilbury to Santos are excellent – with co-loaders Hapag-Lloyd, CMA CGM, Maruba and Hanjin now able to share the benefits as well.

Second is the Maersk-operated ‘L’ class service (also used by Safmarine), which has the fastest times to our other two base ports – Buenos Aires and Montevideo.

However, other operations also have competitive times, and given the large number of ECSA ports that feature in the schedules, the overall picture is far more complicated, and readers are referred to the listing of times to other ports at the bottom of the table of transit times.