Britt Spencer
As the pandemic has revealed, while global trade worked well when trade routes were running smoothly, disruptions to them can lead to chaos. In a 2018 report on the future of food supply chains, for example, the consultancy ARUP found that only eight per cent of companies in the sector believed that they had a genuinely agile supply chain that could respond to disruption quickly.
In 2021, we will see the long supply chains and just-in-time principles of manufacturing and retail turned on their heads. And, as global supply chains continue to be disrupted by the pandemic, we will also change our attitudes to the idea of repairing rather than replacing goods.