DATA from Hong Kong's shipment management software firm CargoSmart shows Maersk and the Mediterranean Shipping Co's (MSC) 2M beat other shipping alliances on the transpacific, but not on the transatlantic.

On the transpacific overall reliability between May 31 and July 25) was 65 per cent, with the 2M hitting 71 per cent, CKYHE scoring 67 per cent and G6 managing 65 per cent.

On the Asia-Europe run, CKYHE performed best at 83 per cent on time, scoring above the 80 per average for the trade, reported American Shipper.

On the transatlantic, CKYHE scored even better at 87 per cent on time scoring well above the 73 per cent average for the trade.

Here the 2M carriers fell down badly with a 40 per cent transatlantic on time average by far the highest deviation from the average by any alliance on any of the three trades measured.

"Carriers provide EDI [electronic data interchange] sailing schedule updates in different formats," CargoSmart said. 

"To ensure that we provided an accurate comparison of estimated times of arrival and actual times of arrival, we included the schedule reliability results only for the carriers that provided EDI schedule updates with both the dates and times," said the Hong Kong company.