Beyond the sailing schedule: a real-world look at Gemini’s impact on container arrival reliability

Over the last 18 months, carrier service networks have come under considerable pressure, from the Red Sea crisis, reorganization of global carrier alliances, and shifts in global trade flows influenced by US policy. This volatility and decline in service quality have directly affected BCOs and freight forwarders through delayed arrivals and extended transit times.

Against this backdrop, Gemini partners Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd made a bold commitment: to deliver industry-leading schedule reliability above 90%, once their new service network was fully phased in.

Six months into the new network, Drewry published an analysis evaluating how the Gemini partners are progressing toward their on-time performance goals, and how ongoing port congestion continues to affect schedule reliability.

Drewry’s methodology focuses solely on mainline vessel services and does not assess the reliability of transhipment legs.

WiseTech has also been monitoring the Gemini network’s impact using data from the CargoWise Market Intelligence & Analytics On-Time Performance product. This data provides a complementary view to Drewry’s study and offers additional insight, especially into performance aspects not included in Drewry’s methodology.

Unlike traditional sailing schedule metrics, CargoWise On-Time Performance measures the full container journey, from origin to destination, based on the difference between the carrier’s promised arrival time (at the time of booking) and the actual arrival. It includes transhipment legs and other potential delays, such as booking rolls. This metric more accurately reflects the cargo owner’s real-world experience and may be a more relevant indicator for BCOs and freight forwarders.

In our analysis, we compared Drewry’s mainline vessel on-time data (February to June) for the Transpacific, Asia–Europe, and Transatlantic headhaul trades with container-level data from CargoWise.

While both datasets show a strong trend of rapid service quality improvement across all three trade lanes, the comparison reveals an ongoing gap between schedule-based metrics and the actual end-to-end container journey. For some stakeholders, sailing schedule reliability, though useful, may not be the most relevant measure of performance.

This distinction is further illustrated through map-based analysis for the Transpacific and Asia–Europe trades.

Key: Number of days in arrival delay

In February, the Transpacific trade showed widespread average arrival delays of more than 8 days at both ports and inland destinations. By July, most ports had high on-time performance, reflecting the improvements in Gemini’s sailing schedule reliability. However, inland destinations still showed delays, albeit reduced, this improvement can be attributed to improvements to the ocean leg component of a shipment, with the inland transport component somewhat outside of Gemini’s control.

This contrasts with the Asia–Europe trade lane, where inland transport plays a smaller role. Here, Gemini’s control over their vessel network has more consistently translated into broad performance improvements.

Similar to Drewry’s findings, our data reveals continued performance differences between Gemini, and carriers in the Premier Alliance and Ocean Alliance.

While on-time performance is just one measure of carrier effectiveness, this case study demonstrates how service restructuring and operational redesign can tangibly improve the customer experience. Gemini appears to be delivering on its promises, though no network is completely immune to external supply chain shocks.

Volatility presents both risks and opportunities for freight forwarders and BCOs, the difference lies in having the right information.

WiseTech Global’s Market Intelligence & Analytics platform tracks key trends and delivers insights into the numbers that shape the market, powered by a unique data-set unmatched in scope and size.

Further information:

• Download the CargoWise Market Intelligence & Analytics flyer