Container vessel schedule reliability across Asia fell to 32.3% in August 2026, as severe regional port congestion pushed the average delay for late vessel arrivals up to 7.28 days, according to the latest Sea-Intelligence Sunday Spotlight (issue 784).

The regional average conceals sharp divergence at country level. China was hit hardest, with national schedule reliability dropping to just 23.9%. Within China, the two largest port complexes fared far worse: Shanghai recorded 12.2% and Ningbo 16.9%, meaning fewer than one in five scheduled arrivals reached berth on time at either gateway.

Sea-Intelligence's country-level comparison of July and August 2026 shows the deterioration was region-wide rather than localised. Nearly every market tracked posted a month-on-month decline, ranging from -5.9 percentage points in Vietnam to -13.1 percentage points in South Korea. Thailand stood alone as the exception, with its August figure up 3.0 percentage points month on month.

The year-on-year comparisons for both July and August point to a sustained erosion of schedule integrity rather than a one-month shock. For shippers and forwarders routing cargo through Asian origin ports, the 7.28-day average delay for late arrivals translates directly into longer door-to-door transit times, tighter buffer stocks and higher risk of missed connection windows on intercontinental services.

For carriers, the data underscores how congestion at hub ports — particularly Shanghai and Ningbo — is absorbing deployed capacity even before vessels reach open water, effectively tightening effective supply on Asia-bound trade lanes. BCOs with fixed weekly sailing programmes face the compounding effect: a late arrival at one Asian port propagates through rotation schedules across subsequent calls.

With reliability falling from an already weak July baseline across nearly all countries measured, and delays on late vessels exceeding seven days, the August figures point to continued pressure on Asia-origin supply chains until port congestion eases.