News / The days of single-sourcing are over, as shippers see disruption as 'normal'

Wayback12 |

Shippers will make permanent moves towards dual-sourcing strategies to defend themselves against the myriad shocks the 2020s have presented.

In just the past 24hrs, Washington’s tariff policy has been revoked and reinstated by US courts, leaving supply chain operators none the wiser on how best to service clients, and negotiators even less certain of the terrain or cards they can work with.

Relex Solutions’ VP of industry strategy, manufacturing, Rohit Tripathi, told The Loadstar the world was witnessing a “total remapping of supply chains”.

He explained: “Businesses are moving from a globally optimised supply chain, premised on one extremely well-tuned, fine-oiled system, towards regionally focused, interlinking supply chains, catering for set markets.

“And I consider that to be the biggest impact right now, and one that will impact long-term, with companies re-adjusting to this.”

He said companies had never operated on a purely single-source strategy, the model better understood as preferred sourcing and preferred routing, with the dual-sourcing option in the tool kit as part of contingency planning.

Naturalising dual-sourcing as the strategy for supply chain alignment would be realised through an “east for east” and a “west for west” strategy, he added.

“You’ll have sourcing split into regions; so, sourcing for the Middle East and Africa, and sourcing for Europe, and then separate sourcing for the Americas.”

While this move to regionalisation may be coinciding with efforts by the Trump administration to rewrite the rule book on global trade, Mr Tripathi echoes others The Loadstar has spoken with, stressing that tariffs alone had not prompted this.

Rather, he considers them “one of the disruptions” over the course of this decade that had prompted a rethink on global trade.

“Tariffs are one disruption, but one in a series of disruptions, and these are not alone; we have geopolitical tensions. There is the situation still continuing in the Red Sea, impacting shipments and logistics.

“Even without the current hot topic of tariffs, companies have been forced to rethink how they balance their supply chains and to re-adjust these to accept disruption as ‘normal’.”

Nor he noted, must the disruption be perceived as wholly negative, pointing to various legislative developments, particularly in the EU, aimng to improve sustainability and traceability, for “healthier practices”.