News / Perishables shippers want more reliability on South American trades

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Perishables shippers want more reliability on South America trades after Q1 figures mirror uncertainty, according to a Sea-Intelligence analysis on deviations between scheduled and actual transit times for tradelanes connected to the continent. 

In its Sunday Spotlight, the maritime intelligence platform analysed port pairs that had 13 or more connections in the first t hree months of the year. 

It revealed that just 19% of  South America west coast-Europe port pairs saw a schedule reliability of 90% or higher, while none of the SA east coast-Europe port pairs saw similar reliability. South America-Asia trade had only 5% of the port pairs above that threshold. 

And looking at the difference between scheduled and actual transit times over the quarter, with a lower deviation meaning they were closer, for Asia-ECSA, the median transit time deviation was 3.03 days, typically ranging between 1.44 and 5.34 days.  

“While a good portion of sailings might have a smaller deviation from the schedule, there’s a notable risk of encountering significantly higher deviations that stretch the upper range,” said Sea-Intelligence.

Asia-WCSA had a median transit time deviation of 2.41 days, with a range of 0.61 to 4.19 days, while ECSA-MED had a median deviation of 2.13 days, with a range of 0.99 to 4.51 days, indicating “a tangible risk of the deviations being considerably larger”. 

The greatest deviation between scheduled and actual arrival times was seen on ECSA-North Europe, a median of 5.49 days and a range of 3.57 to 8.87 days.

Sea-Intelligence warned: “Variations are more likely to result in even higher transit time deviations rather than shorter ones… Shippers need to account for this, meaning that while the median deviation is 5.49 days, transit time deviations of up to nearly nine days are within the expected operational behaviour.” 

However, for WCSA-North Europe, the median was 2.64 days, with a range of 0.25 days to 4.52 days, said the analyst, adding: “This could be beneficial for urgent shipments, but shippers should also note the overall range. This level of certainty is vital for a shipper to plan their supply chain accordingly,” it explained.

This is particularly vital for exports from South America, as this region boasts a bustling perishables trade. 

Indeed, at TPM25 by S&P Global, Mauricio Padrón, senior supply chain director at Walmart, said: “I’m really waiting for the 90% on-time from Gemini. I think these types of commodities, especially the fresh, deserve to have 90% consistently at last. 

“Carriers around the world are trying to reduce people and put in more technology. Unfortunately, for fresh, that doesn’t work because a customer in Peru, for example, needs to talk with someone if the ship is not coming, and if the containers are not available, because the technology is not there. I think we have some work to do on that from the whole chain.” 

Sea-Intelligence added that any delays also caused “downstream issues within the supply chain”, but added that early shipments could be “equally problematic” if they incurred additional detention and demurrage charges for a shipper unable to pick the shipment up earlier than scheduled.