This week’s supply chain risk news
What’s mined is yours?
Critical minerals are in high demand. The United Nations sees a case to help countries avoid shortages while easing international tensions and encouraging sustainability. The idea, outlined in a United Nations University policy brief, is a framework called the Global Minerals Trust, in which countries would pool and jointly manage such resources.
Along with computing and defense applications, the Wall Street Journal reports, clean energy technologies are a major driver of demand for minerals like lithium, cobalt, and rare earths, accounting for “more than 50% of total demand growth for critical minerals.”
The policy brief says the Trust would “promote transparency, support recycling, and ensure that mineral-rich nations—especially in the Global South—share equitably in the benefits.” That’s noteworthy as, in recent months, Zimbabwe announced a ban on lithium exports from 2027. Furthermore, the Democratic Republic of Congo, a major cobalt producer, has maintained a ban on exporting the metal since February.
Amid heightened geopolitical risk and potential major supply chain disruptions, a more stable arrangement might have a certain appeal. Indeed, one other challenge for the idea will be winning buy-in from juggernauts like the U.S. and China.
Stiff links in the food chain
The food system is prone to disruption even in the best of times. As the planet gets ever hotter and extreme weather events become more common, these are perhaps not those. Recent months have seen disruptions in India—where untimely rains amped up fruit flies and damage to mangoes—and California, where the latest cherry season came in about half that of the last two years. To that list, let’s now add bananas.
A top official warns climate change is worsening one of the widely popular banana sector’s other big problems: fungal disease. That’s led Fresh Del Monte to mull its options, from researching fungus-resistant banana varieties to simply helping growers manage supply more evenly.
Then there’s wheat in Brazil. In June, heavy rain and flooding delayed cultivation in vast areas of the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul. With drier days now forecast, Valor International reports farmers hope to make up for the lost time. Meanwhile, in nearby Paraná, wheat crops planted early were hit by frost, leading to declines in crop quality. Some 50,000 hectares (nearly 200 square miles) are in “poor” condition and likely to disappoint at harvest time.
On risk-optimized logistics
Businesses rely on moving goods, and as volumes have increased, so has the potential for disruption. From a logistics standpoint, this means beyond cost and efficiency, risk is an unavoidable consideration.
You can’t pinpoint exactly when an earthquake will happen. But you can predict that key port will be clogged, or a critical carrier will go bankrupt. Once you know where these risks are, you can start thinking about how to minimize their impact, well before they become disruptions.
Proactively anticipating issues with help from top-of-the-line analytics and risk intelligence can help you see when the lowest-cost route or carrier isn’t worth the gamble—and help you develop ways to safeguard reliability and customer satisfaction.
Of course, there are many different types of logistics risk: physical infrastructure like bridges can fail, weather and natural disasters can strike—as can workers, in a different sense—carriers and service providers can go under or change. Other risks range from geopolitics to cybersecurity, as we discuss on our blog.
We also discuss how you can prepare to mitigate such risks—and ultimately embed risk optimization throughout your logistics operation to ensure not just efficiency but also resilience.
Toy companies “flying blind” toward holiday sales
It’s hard to look into the crystal ball and divine where things like consumer sentiment will be four months from now. But around this time each year, that’s exactly what toymakers and retailers try to predict as they start preparing for Christmas.
“It’s a little bit of a black box what the back half of the year is going to look like,” Chris Cox, CEO of the giant toymaker Hasbro, said on a recent earnings call. “I think you’re going to see companies like us be cautious on our inventory… A lot of hot products are going to likely be out of stock this holiday.” Rival toymaker Mattel voiced similar uncertainty due to tariffs. “They’re essentially admitting they’re flying blind,” one expert commented.
Cox’s suggestion? If you’re a parent who knows of a must-have item on a kid’s Christmas list, don’t wait—buy it now. Of course, he would say that; he runs a toy company. But it might still be sound advice.
