Hey friends,

There’s a photograph that stuck with me from those chaotic weeks: a long line of container ships waiting at the edge of the Suez, then a second image of the same vessels re-routing south, hugging Africa’s Cape of Good Hope. They looked like ships fleeing a storm — because they were. What happened in late 2023 and into 2024 wasn’t a one-off security scare; it was a stress test for a global trading system designed for efficiency, not for shocks. The result: delays, costs, new inflationary pressure and a clear lesson — our supply chains had built-in fragility where we assumed resilience.

Here’s the story, in plain terms, what it revealed about global trade, and a practical playbook procurement and operations teams can use now.