It will take container lines eight to nine months to get their schedule reliability back on track after more than two years with the Covid pandemic and chaotic supply chains.

That’s the assessment of Sea-Intelligence, which posits the situation with major bottlenecks on the US west coast in 2015 as a comparable scenario for examining the industry’s current outlook.

”As the 2015 problem was resolved in 6-7 months, this means an average reduction in excess delay of 1.25-1.46 days per month,” writes Sea-Intelligence.

”If the current port and hinterland system manages the same speed of recovery this time, it means that the current delays will take 8-9 months to resolve.”

In December 2021, 10.1 percent of the ships on the stretch from Asia to the US west coast arrived on time, while the figure for February 2015 came to 12.6 percent. At the same time, the analyst firm estimates that ships in December 2021 on average arrived 11.5 days late compared to a pre-pandemic baseline, while the number for February 2015 is 8.7 days.

If the recovery had begun in December 2021, from where the latest data are gathered, the container sector would in this scenario return to normal in August or September this year, Sea-Intelligence assesses.

Realistically, however, it will take a while longer as there are no signs that carrier reliability has improved going into February. Meanwhile, there’s also the catch that the problems in 2015 exclusively affected the US west coast.

”Now it is a global challenge, and the problem also include inland logistics issues,” writes Sea-Intelligence.

English edit: Jonas Sahl Hollænder

Container reliability hit new low at the end of 2021

Fewer ships are waiting off the US west coast

Container ships arriving on time is a far-off prospect, say analyst firms