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ContainerSignal Daily: September reliability falls to 27% on-time

By Toni Tan · · 15 min read

Global container schedule reliability fell for a fourth consecutive month in September, dropping 2 percentage points to 27% on-time with an average vessel delay of six days, according to Xeneta’s September Schedule Reliability Scorecard. The Far East to Europe trade recorded its worst month since September 2021, when on-time performance hit 3% during the pandemic, and Chinese gateway congestion is now translating into berth-arrival delays in Europe and North America. The same body of data shows the cost of that unreliability landing in spot rates, while the Suez Canal passed a milestone on its way back to pre-crisis volumes. What is schedule reliability in container shipping? sets out how the metric is measured.

Today’s Signals

Freight Rates

Xeneta put its spot-market average for China to the US West Coast at US$7,717 per FEU in early October, more than four times the US$1,778 recorded in September 2025 and 8% above the start of September 2026, while long-term rates on the same lane rose 26% month on month to US$3,649 per FEU on 1 October, FreightWaves reports. The gap between the two is the clearest signal of how far contract business has fallen behind the spot market on the transpacific. It sits against a still-soft Asia-Europe picture, where spot rates continued to fall into early October while transpacific gains stalled.

Capacity management has not been doing the work it did earlier in the year. Carriers blanked only 6% of planned capacity on Far East to Europe and 8% on Far East to North America in September, their third-lowest blanking levels in 21 months, as delays and pre-Golden Week demand absorbed available capacity. Announced blank sailings for October rise to at least 17% of planned capacity on Far East to Europe and 13% on Far East to North America, but planned Far East to Europe capacity in October is the highest of any month in a 22-month window, which leaves limited slack to offset delays through cancellations. What is a blank sailing? explains how carriers use cancellations to manage capacity.

Carrier Updates

Reliability at carrier level deteriorated almost everywhere. Every carrier tracked by Xeneta posted its highest average delay of the past 12 months in September, and four reached 12-month lows for on-time arrivals: CMA CGM at 30%, COSCO at 18%, Hapag-Lloyd at 45% and Yang Ming at 4%. Maersk was the month’s most reliable carrier but still slipped from 51% to 47%, and the spread between best and worst narrowed to 43 percentage points from 45 in August. The Gemini network of Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd, launched on a promise of on-time performance, fell from 70% on-time in June to 40% in September, with its weekly rate dropping from 62% in the first week of August to 34% in the week ended 28 September and 28% in partial data for the week of 5 October, FreightWaves reports. What Is a Shipping Alliance? covers how alliance networks such as Gemini are structured.

Ports

The Port of Los Angeles handled 1,042,652 TEU in September 2026, its busiest month in 118 years and more than 20,000 TEU above the previous record set in July 2025, Container News reports. Loaded imports reached 545,696 TEU, up 19% year on year, loaded exports totalled 125,751 TEU, up 10%, and empty containers hit approximately 371,206 TEU, the highest monthly total in the port’s history. The quarter from July to September produced nearly 3 million TEU, and the first nine months of 2026 stand at nearly 8.1 million TEU, more than 3% ahead of the same period last year. Executive Director Gene Seroka attributed the record to resilient consumer demand, inventory replenishment and cargo reallocating to Los Angeles as shippers work around constraints on Suez and Panama Canal routings, and said tariffs are lower than earlier in the year. He put October volume at about 900,000 TEU, citing typhoon-related schedule disruption in Asia and pre-holiday replenishment.

Congestion spread downstream from China into Southeast Asia as well. Singapore’s average daily vessel queue nearly doubled to 22 ships in September and average wait time rose from 1.9 to 3.1 days, while Southeast Asia as a whole recorded a 2.0-day average wait with 23% of vessels waiting. In Northeast Asia, 30% of vessels at port were waiting and average wait rose 0.3 days to 1.6 days, and Shanghai’s anchorage queue shortened from 101 to 86 vessels per day even as average wait lengthened from 1.9 to 2.7 days. Africa remained the most congested region despite improvement, at a 2.5-day average wait and 32% of vessels waiting, FreightWaves reports.

West Africa shows the same mismatch in a structural form. Drewry recorded a 19.4% year-on-year rise in regional container throughput last year, reflecting the introduction of larger vessels on Asia to West Africa services, and congestion is now exposing infrastructure beyond the terminal gates. Drewry’s ports and terminals specialist Eirik Hooper told The Loadstar that Douala operated at 102% utilisation last year with volumes up 48% year on year, while Conakry, Dakar, Lomé and Pointe-Noire ran between 81% and 84%. Tema in Ghana saw congestion of four to seven days during the summer peak and is still around the six-day mark, and at Abidjan average vessel wait times jumped from 0.4 days in February to 2.2 days by the end of August despite additional yard equipment delivered in 2025. Hooper attributed the pattern to a mismatch between investment inside terminals and investment outside them, with landside bottlenecks such as slow container evacuation, truck shortages, customs delays and inadequate off-dock storage determining effective terminal capacity. DP World’s Africa chief executive Mohammed Akoojee said the operator has invested US$340 million in modernising its Dakar terminal, taking throughput from 265,000 TEU in 2008 to 850,000 TEU in 2025 and cutting vessel wait times from 35 hours to near zero, with a further US$1.2 billion committed to the new deepwater port of Ndayane and an initial annual capacity there of 1.2 million TEU, The Loadstar reports.

Trade Routes

Suez Canal container ship transits have passed 50% of pre-disruption levels for the first time since the Houthi attacks began. Weekly container ship capacity transiting the canal averaged 753,000 TEU in the first two weeks of October, against 1,457,000 TEU in the same period of 2023, according to Clarksons Research data cited by BIMCO chief shipping analyst Niels Rasmussen. Measured against total container ship capacity routed via the canal or the Cape of Good Hope, the canal’s share was 36% in early October, up from an average of 8% between 2024 and mid-2026 but still well below the 80% recorded before the attacks began in late 2023. The recovery has been led by southbound sailings, with northbound capacity at 81% of southbound in the first weeks of October against 75% in the third quarter. Rasmussen said BIMCO estimates the diversion away from Suez added about 10% to global container ship demand and that this is now reducing quickly, but cautioned that because the return has coincided with rising congestion in Asia, the full effect on supply and demand has yet to show. Since Gemini announced on 6 July 2026 that its AE15/SE3 Asia to Mediterranean service would return, changes to 16 services have been announced, WorldCargo News reports. Analysts remain ahead of the capacity: Linerlytica expects a full-scale return to the Red Sea route within the first quarter of 2027 despite the worsening conflict, the Journal of Commerce reports.

Security risk in the Gulf remains elevated alongside that shift. The UKMTO has issued 18 reports of attacks on vessels in the Strait of Hormuz and the surrounding region during October, as Iran has stepped up targeting of commercial shipping it says is transiting without its permission. Four of those, reported on 11 October, involved three tankers and a container ship, with the box ship struck by an unknown projectile during an inbound transit, Seatrade Maritime reported on 13 October. Attacks on container ships in the strait are infrequent because major lines keep away from Hormuz transits, with some smaller feeder traffic continuing to operate, so the container market’s exposure runs mainly through Gulf services, war-risk premiums and Middle East feeder connections.

Fleet & Capacity

China’s Zhonggu Shipping Group has ordered two 14,000 TEU containerships at Hudong-Zhonghua Shipbuilding, moving into significantly larger tonnage without disclosing the value or delivery dates, Splash 247 reports. Zhonggu Shipping Group holds 57.46% of Shanghai-listed Zhonggu Logistics, which has been expanding its own newbuilding programme through 2026: in June it confirmed plans to lift the capacity of eight previously ordered ships from 6,000 TEU to 6,300 TEU after a design revision, adding to ten 1,800 TEU vessels ordered earlier in the year, a programme worth RMB6.86 billion (US$1bn), with RMB3 billion earmarked from a planned convertible bond issue.

Greek owner Tsakos has returned to containership contracting for the first time since 2022 with two 3,200 TEU ships at China’s Hengli Heavy Industries, scheduled for delivery in the fourth quarter of 2028, Splash 247 reports. Both vessels will be scrubber-fitted and equipped with alternative maritime power systems for shore-side electricity connection. Neither Tsakos nor the yard has disclosed pricing, though market sources put the ships at about US$48 million each, implying a combined investment of about US$96 million, and Alphaliner said the timing of the contracts is unclear and they could have been signed in August or September. Charter arrangements are unknown. Tsakos operates 10 containerships and Elbdeich Reederei has since been linked to two similar 3,200 TEU ships at Hengli.

Fuel & Costs

Research by energy pricing specialist General Index and the London Stock Exchange Group found that B30, a blend of 30% used cooking oil methyl ester and 70% very low sulphur fuel oil, became US$74.61 per tonne cheaper than conventional VLSFO in Rotterdam in April once EU Emissions Trading System allowances and potential FuelEU Maritime penalties were counted. In the preceding three months B30 had been between US$11 and US$27 per tonne more expensive on the same basis, and B100 used cooking oil methyl ester traded at a discount to marine gasoil for eight weeks between March and May. Average European gasoil prices climbed US$476 per tonne between February and March while the cooking oil ester rose just US$65, after the closure of the Strait of Hormuz sent fossil fuel prices soaring. The authors of the white paper, titled Lessons From Hormuz: Disruptions For Renewable Fuel Cost Competitiveness, cautioned against reading the shift as permanent, noting biofuels remain generally more expensive than conventional bunkers before carbon costs are included and that the Rotterdam comparison includes potential regulatory penalties rather than costs every vessel incurs, Splash 247 reports.

Quick Bites

  • Axpo completed its first LNG bunkering operation at the Port of Valencia on 13 October 2026, using its Alisios bunkering vessel, which has a capacity of 12,500 m3, to supply a container vessel with a mix containing more than 50% bio-LNG. It is the fourth Spanish port where the company has provided the service, after Málaga, Algeciras and Barcelona, and Axpo did not disclose the vessel or the volume delivered, Container News reports.
  • Bangladesh signed a US$335.78 million concessional loan with China’s Export-Import Bank to expand Mongla Port, its second-largest seaport. The 2% loan is repayable over 20 years with a five-year grace period and funds two container terminals and dedicated cargo yards under a Tk 4,068 crore project due for completion by December 2028, Maritime Gateway reports.

What It Means

Reliability, not price, is now the binding constraint on the transpacific. On-time performance of 20% on Asia to North America and 4% on the Far East to Europe means transit time planning, not the quoted rate, is what decides whether holiday inventory arrives on schedule, and Xeneta’s advice is for shippers to build extra lead time into October bookings and to ask carriers which services are protected from capacity cuts. That question is sharper than usual because announced October blank sailings rise to 17% on Far East to Europe while planned capacity on the trade is at a 22-month high, so the cancellations are landing on the fullest schedule of the period rather than trimming a light one. For contract negotiations covering 2027, Xeneta argues reliability, port rotations and unscheduled calls should sit alongside price, which matters when spot China to US West Coast sits at more than four times its September 2025 level and long-term rates have moved 26% in a single month.

The Suez milestone cuts the other way, and the two effects are not offsetting cleanly. BIMCO estimates rerouting away from the canal had inflated global container ship demand by about 10%, and that inflation is now unwinding as 16 services have been restored, which adds effective capacity to Asia-Europe just as that trade’s spot rates keep easing. The counterweight is congestion: Asian delays are absorbing capacity at the same time as the rerouting benefit fades, and the port data this month, from Singapore’s doubled vessel queue to West Africa’s six-day waits at Tema, points to landside and other bottlenecks rather than a shortage of quay capacity. For shippers in West Africa and other emerging markets the practical implication is that terminal capex alone will not shorten transit times, because effective capacity is set by roads, rail, trucking and off-dock storage as much as by cranes. And the Hormuz tally, now 18 UKMTO reports in October, keeps war-risk cost as a live line item for any cargo routed near the Gulf, even though the container market’s direct exposure there is limited to feeder and Gulf services rather than mainline loops.

Sources

Background reading

The explainers behind today's stories, if you want the fundamentals first.

Asia-Europe rates fall even as the container network stays tight

Asia-Europe spot rates fell for a twelfth week while intra-Asia set another record and mid-size tonnage ran scarce. The two readings measure different layers.

Asia-Europe rates fall a thirteenth week as transpacific eases

Drewry's World Container Index fell 2% to US$4,351 per 40ft in the week to 8 October, Asia-Europe's thirteenth weekly decline, as transpacific rates eased.

The Arctic container route works; the backhaul does not yet exist

Two Arctic container trials closed within days of each other. Both carried export cargo out and empties home, which is where the route's economics break.

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ContainerSignal Daily: Suez returns add capacity as war risk rises

Carriers keep routing Asia-Europe via Suez as Drewry lifts its phase-back forecast, while blank sailings fall and war-risk costs mount.

ContainerSignal Daily: ONE joins Suez return as rates slide

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ContainerSignal Daily: Red Sea capacity doubles in six weeks

Xeneta puts weekly capacity across Bab el-Mandeb at 448,273 TEU, double the level six weeks ago, while carriers blank transpacific sailings to defend rates.