Covid-19 may be six years ago now, but British business remembers the impact it had on global supply chains. The flow of raw materials, components, finished products, and empty shipping containers was severely disrupted and took a long time to recover, with predictable impacts on costs, supplies and overall operations.
Now a major player in the international shipping world is warning that the country remains “highly exposed” to disruptions across its global supply lines, despite the previous warning signs raised by the pandemic.
Cleveland Containers, a leading supplier of shipping containers, has issued a report quoting the Department for Transport as saying that 85% of the UK’s international freight by mass, and 55% by value, moved by sea in 2024. And that makes the country particularly susceptible to problems in maritime transport corridors – such as war, piracy, natural disasters or other woes.
Cleveland further quotes an Office for National Statistics analysis, which found that many UK-bound container ships were rerouted around the Cape of Good Hope in 2024 due to insecurity in the Red Sea, thereby increasing transit times by several weeks. Meanwhile, the UN Conference on Trade and Development has warned of disruptions across the Red Sea, the Suez Canal and the Panama Canal.
“The challenge for businesses is that supply chain disruption is no longer a one-off event that can be treated as exceptional,” said Richard Gray, CCO at Cleveland Containers. “Volatility across trade routes is becoming a more regular operating condition, and that changes how businesses need to think about stock, space, and contingency planning.”
Cleveland says it’s vital for businesses to consider those moves. Lean inventory models and efficient just-in-time supply chains have helped cut costs, but planning for increased resilience means firms are having to consider: diversifying sourcing strategies, ‘nearshoring’ production where possible, and adopting digital tools to improve visibility across supply networks.
On-site storage is one solution, and Cleveland Containers says it can help with scalable options such as standard stackable 20ft containers, enabling businesses to quickly increase capacity in response to disruptions.
“What we are seeing is a move towards practical resilience,” said Gray. “Businesses are asking how they can create a bit more breathing room in their operations, whether that is through extra stockholding, more flexible storage, or a supply chain model that is less exposed to one single point of failure.”