News / Gemini partners still steaming ahead on schedule reliability

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Global liner schedule reliability in May reached its highest level for 18 months, with the Gemini duo on top for both alliances and carriers.  

According to today’s data from maritime intelligence platform eeSea, last month’s total global on-time carrier performance (OTP) moved up 4 percentage points from April, to reach 38%. 

Not only is this the highest level of reliability shippers have seen since January 2024, when OTP sat at 34%, but it has been on an upward trend since the start of the year.  

“Of course, still a far cry from pre-pandemic numbers,” reminded eeSea analysts. 

Maersk maintained its title as ‘most reliable’, with an OTP of 61%, followed by Hapag-Lloyd at 57%, both well ahead of Wan Hai’s 47%. HMM was bottom of the list with an OTP of just 10%.  

It is unsurprising that the Gemini Cooperation also took top spot for alliance OTP, at 81%.  

Rolf Habben Jensen, CEO of Hapag-Lloyd, told The Loadstar on the sidelines of Transport Logistic in Munich last week: “I’m still very happy. 

“I think the last four-six weeks were pretty stable above 90% and, as I indicated at that time, I think in the beginning we had a couple of weeks we were at 87%, 88%, but I think from the start we have been very close to 90%, so from that perspective, pretty happy.” 

And Mr Habben Jensen noted that higher schedule reliability had “two big benefits”. 

“One is our on-time delivery is much better,” he said, “and the second is that we also sail every week,” Mr Habben Jensen added. 

“In the previous years, we’ve had to blank quite a lot of sailings because of delays. Now we don’t do that, so of course that automatically creates some growth because instead of having, let’s say, eight voyages in ten weeks, you now have ten voyages in ten weeks. Automatically as a consequence of that you’ll see above average growth,” he explained. 

However, while Gemini holds the top spot for reliability among the alliances, eeSea reported that “it is on a downward trajectory”. 

In April it reported an 82% OTP, which means its reliability fell last month to 81%.  But if you look at the data week by week, the Gemini carriers were able to recover from a 76% OTP in week 19, to 80% in week 20, 84% in week 21 and 83% in week 22. 

It is also way ahead of the Ocean Alliance’s 29%. In April, CMA CGM, OOCL, Cosco and Evergreen were neck and neck with the Premier Alliance, at 25%, but the latter’s performance dropped last month to just over 20% OTP.  

Standalone carrier MSC, boasting similar capacity,  was in third place with 25%.