News / Supply chain disruption costly for shippers, but helps build resilience, says Maersk

© Andrii Yalanskyi

The regularity of ‘black swan’ events has meant unexpected costs for European shippers, according to Maersk, but it could be a chance to “build back better”.  

Repeated disrupted supply chains remain “a major challenge” for shippers across Europe, bringing “significant financial impact” for their bottom lines, according to a survey of more than 2,000 Maersk customers in the region.  

The Danish carrier found that more than 76% of businesses experienced delays to their operations in the past 12 months due to supply chain disruption, with 22% counting more than 20 “disruptive incidents”.  

The disruptions arose from various root causes… “two main reasons are a rising number of geopolitical conflicts and tension and severe weather situations due to the dramatic climate change”, said Maersk.  

Geopolitical instability was the biggest potential disruptor to their supply chains this year, said 80% of respondents.

Indeed, today Alphaliner reported that commercially idle tonnage, as a proportion of the total cellular container fleet, reached an all-time low in the first ten months of the year, at 0.7%, noting “as the Red Sea crisis forced carriers to call on every available ship to service voyage diversions and meet soaring demand”. 

According to the maritime consultant, the Red Sea crisis has had a bigger impact on ship employment than Covid, “even more striking given the huge growth in the cellular fleet over the past four years”, it said.  

And supply chain disruption isn’t only a logistical nuisance, delaying shipments and making capacity scarce, but it is also costly: 58% of cargo owners in Maersk’s survey said disruptions experienced in their supply chains over the 12 months produced “much more cost than they envisaged”. 

As a result, its survey found, 53% of Maersk’s European customers were considering new sourcing locations, with 33% of those looking to near-shore.  

“The most prominent sourcing location being considered is Turkey, by 11% of respondents, followed by Egypt, by 7%, Poland by 6%, Morocco by 3% and Romania by 2%,” it said.  

“Having multiple black swan events at such regularity has piled the pressure on a lot of European companies to not just keep business moving, but even to keep their heads above water. Some of which, sadly, haven’t been able to survive,” said Maersk. 

However, it concluded that “difficult times… give companies the chance to build back better”.  

It highlighted that, according to McKinsey research, 97% of companies reshaped their supply chains in 2022 in a bid to boost resilience post-Covid, including inventory changes, multisourcing strategies and regionalisation.  

“What’s more, these measures are actually paying off, with 83% saying they’ve benefited from the additional resilience when tackling new issues that have come their way,” said Maersk.