Europe-Africa and Africa-Europe container shipping routes have become among the world's ten most operationally volatile shipping corridors over the past 24 months, according to new analysis by maritime consultancy Sea-Intelligence.
Monthly variability in schedule reliability was as important as overall performance when evaluating supply chains, the consultancy said, arguing that consistency had become increasingly important for shippers and cargo owners.
"From the perspective of schedule reliability, when evaluating supply chains, analysing monthly variability is as important as the monthly performance alone," the company said.
A trade lane recording 95% schedule reliability in one month but dropping to 10% the next offered little value for planning, while a route consistently achieving around 80% reliability provided far greater predictability, Sea-Intelligence said.
The Asia-East Coast South America trade lane has recorded the highest schedule reliability volatility over the past two years, with variability exceeding 33% of average reliability, according to the analysis. South America-North America and Asia-North America East Coast also ranked among the most unstable trade lanes.
Nine of the ten most volatile deep-sea trade lanes over the past 24 months were newcomers to the bottom tier compared with the 2018-19 pre-pandemic period, Sea-Intelligence found. Only the Transatlantic westbound trade lane remained consistently volatile across both periods.
Regional north-south and feeder-connected services, including Europe-Africa, Africa-Europe and Middle East-Europe, had also entered the world's most volatile group of trade lanes, the consultancy said.
While the ten best-performing trade lanes have shown a slight improvement in schedule stability since the pre-pandemic period, the most volatile corridors are experiencing unprecedented operational disruption, according to Sea-Intelligence.
The findings suggest that although average schedule reliability has improved on some trades since the worst of the pandemic-era disruption, large month-to-month swings continue to undermine supply chain planning on several key global and Africa-linked shipping routes.
