Average schedule reliability of major container liners 2020-2023

Container carriers' reliability oscillated between January 2020 and July 2023. While 68.5 percent of container ships arrived on time in January 2020, only 34.8 percent of container vessels arrived without any delay to their destination in January 2021 and 30.4 percent of vessels in January 2022. This rise in delays, caused predominantly by the COVID-19 pandemic, has led some major retailers to charter container fleets of their own. Companies such as Target, Walmart, Home Depot, and IKEA have all chartered container ships to ensure that goods manufactured overseas reach their stores on time.
In the second half of 2022, however, ships began to increasingly arrive on time. In July 2023, about 64.2 percent of container ships reached their destination without a delay.

COVID-19 pandemic disrupting port operations

The outbreak of the pandemic severely affected the global shipping industry. Port operators, container carriers, and freight forwards have faced difficulties caused by the pandemic. Coronavirus outbreaks, resulting in mandatory quarantines of employees, lockdowns of ports, and vessel congestions of Chinese ports, have introduced a high level of uncertainty into the industry. Container carriers and port operators alike struggled with labor shortages, which reduced their efficiency and contributed to the delays of container ships.

Lowered capacity utilization of ships

All container ship operators have reported lowered schedule reliability over the past two years, making it an industry-wide phenomenon. Due to delays and trade imbalances, utilizing container ships’ capacity has also become difficult. While in January 2020, only 3.8 percent of the global container fleet capacity was not utilized, this share grew to 10.6 percent in January 2021 and 13.7 percent in January 2022.