New global challenges set to reshape our supply chain, logistics sector warned

Supply chains may need to “reset” to a localised model in order to respond to new market forces and major challenges like global warming, decarbonisation and conflicts, according to a logistics expert.

Professor Alan McKinnon said globalisation could be going into reverse and that logistics and global trade networks may need to move to a new economic order.

McKinnon said: “The feeling is that the economic order that has been in place for the last 30 years, which has underpinned globalisation, is breaking down.

“We see that in the case of the current Ukrainian crisis.

“This will change the nature and scale of the threats to our global supply chain, because if we’re moving into a new world, we are going to have to completely reconfigure our supply chains,” he said.

“There will be a lot of strains and stresses in that process and that will be disruptive in the shorter term.”

Speaking at Logistics UK’s supply chain resilience conference in London this week, professor McKinnon said geopolitical tensions had been stoked up by a combination of globalisation, trade liberalisation and the internet and that this was having an impact on supply chains, effectively “weaponising connectivity”.