BSI Finds 54% of Firms Still Reactive on Supply Chain Risk

Confidence, it turns out, is cheap. Foundations are not. That is the central tension in new research from BSI, whose report Building for disruption: the new outlook for supply chain resilience finds that 81% of organisations expect to be better prepared for disruption over the next 12 months — even as 54% admit their approach to supply chain risk management remains largely reactive1. The survey, drawing on more than 1,400 managers across supply chain, finance, procurement, operations and legal functions, lands at a moment when the global logistics system is serving daily reminders that disruption is no longer an occasional event but a standing condition1.

The readiness gap in numbers

The headline statistics tell a story of intention outpacing execution. While four in five respondents say they will be better prepared within a year, only 27% can act on the same day a disruption strikes, and 37% did not follow their crisis plan during their most recent disruption — a figure that includes the period of the Iran–Israel conflict1. Among organisations that maintain an always-on crisis response team, activation can take up to three days for a third of them1.

The structural weaknesses behind those numbers are sobering. Some 43% of organisations lack a formal, documented process for managing supply chain risk, and slow or unclear approval processes stall decisions at more than four in ten firms1. Only 39% have clear protocols for cross-functional communication when disruption hits, and just a third have complete visibility of supplier locations and geographic exposure1. More than a third cite silos and poor cross-functional coordination as a barrier to decision-making, while barely 38% say cross-functional teams meet weekly or more often1.

Tony Pelli, BSI's practice director for supply chain resilience, frames the stakes in human terms: 2026 has been the hottest summer on record for several countries, and with volatile conditions expected to persist into 2027 under El Niño patterns, supply chain breakdown "directly impacts everyday lives" through rising shelf prices and reduced access to essential goods1. His colleague David Fairnie is blunter about the diagnosis — most organisations expect to be well prepared, yet "don't have the foundations of resilience firmly in place"1.

Why this matters now: a year of compounding shocks

The survey data explains why supply chain teams feel under siege. Over the past 12 months, 40% of organisations experienced climate-related disruptions, 38% were hit by cyber incidents, another 38% by conflict, sanctions or political instability, 35% faced component or raw material shortages, and 39% encountered transport disruptions1. These are not independent events — they compound. A heatwave slows a port; a rerouted vessel burns more fuel; a labour dispute at a transhipment hub strands empty containers for weeks.

The past year has supplied ample case studies. In August 2026, Freightos reported that congestion — including delays from a labour strike in Germany — was helping keep Asia–Europe container rates higher than they otherwise would be, even as peak season demand eased. Asia–North Europe prices had fallen roughly 20% from their July high, but remained about 60% — more than $1,800 per FEU — above May levels, while transpacific rates climbed to new highs of around $9,400 per FEU to the US East Coast17. Carriers were adding emergency bunker surcharges of about $90 per FEU after fuel prices climbed 15%, and canal transit surcharges ranging from $200 to $1,000 per FEU were slated to begin in mid-September17.

Earlier in the year, the pattern was equally volatile. Transpacific ocean rates spiked 30% and 20% month over month to the US West and East Coasts respectively in early January 2026, ahead of Lunar New Year, with Asia–East Coast rates reaching $3,757 per FEU15. By July, analysts were tracking rates surging to between $7,000 and $13,000 per FEU on some lanes, driven by Red Sea rerouting, blank sailings — Drewry counted 30 cancelled sailings in a five-week window — and war-risk insurance surcharges jumping 300% to 500%16. Other forecasters saw a generally softening market overall, with the Drewry World Container Index in the low $2,000s and a capacity surplus of more than 10% on main East–West routes, but warned that any Red Sea escalation or resolution could shift rates 20–30% in either direction within weeks1213.

Port labour: the disruption multiplier

Port workers remain among the most consequential actors in this system, and recent history shows why. The International Longshoremen's Association strike that shut down 36 US ports — more than half of American container volume — was estimated to cost the US economy roughly $5 billion per day before a deal with USMX ended the action20. The knock-on effects read like a checklist of everything BSI's respondents fear: carriers imposing $3,000 per FEU named-port charges, rerouting adding $1,000–$1,500 per FEU in extra port-to-port costs, CMA CGM and COSCO declaring force majeure, and demurrage, detention, chassis and storage fees piling up on stranded cargo20.

Even the rhetoric around strikes moves markets. When the ILA began its October 2024 action, it claimed carriers were charging $30,000 per container — a figure Xeneta's data, drawn from more than 450 million crowdsourced datapoints, dismissed as scaremongering, with actual Far East–US East Coast spot rates around $7,000 per FEU and North Europe–US East Coast rates nearer $2,80011. The point for shippers is that in a climate of fear, benchmarking discipline collapses, and panic premiums get paid11.

The disruption is hardly confined to American docks. In early October 2026, Philippine truckers launched a "truck holiday" to protest port congestion and rising costs, with empty container returns taking as long as 40 days, trucks effectively immobilised, and chassis rental and driver costs accruing while no revenue work was possible14. Reporting on the Manila standoff described thousands of empties scattered across terminals and yards with only about 10% of volumes actually moving out of the city's ports, Hapag-Lloyd suspending bookings, and observers warning the logjam was directly feeding the country's rising food prices19.

Costs flow through to consumers

This is where the BSI findings stop being a logistics story and become an economic one. More than a third of surveyed organisations — 36% — plan to raise prices over the next six months to offset supply chain costs1. Rising freight rates, congestion surcharges, fuel levies and compliance costs — including EU ETS and IMO carbon rules that analysts estimate add $150 to $400 per container on Asia–Europe lanes, a structural floor that will grow as thresholds tighten13 — do not stay within corporate margins. They reach the shelf.

Philippine trucking leaders made the same argument in miniature: faster cargo movement would mean lower prices for goods14. And in the US, retail analysts have already documented how shipper frontloading to beat tariffs inflated inventories and distorted normal seasonal volume patterns15.

Building endurance, not just responding

Encouragingly, organisations are not simply hoping for the best. BSI found substantial structural shifts underway over the next six months: 80% of organisations plan to increase strategic inventory stockpiles, 79% intend to change transport modes, 78% are nearshoring key operations, 33% are seeking new supplier networks, 28% plan to reduce product ranges or SKUs, and 24% expect to shift trade routes entirely1.

But readiness for specific shocks lags the ambition. Only 35% feel fully prepared for geopolitical shocks, 34% for raw material shortages and 37% for cyber incidents1. And a new threat is moving up the register: 59% believe artificial intelligence will increase the risk of theft and cybercrime in supply chains, while barely 34% feel fully prepared to handle severe technology failures1.

The reading

The honest interpretation of this data is uncomfortable. An industry that has spent five years being disrupted in every conceivable way — pandemic, war, canal blockages, strikes, heat, sanctions, cyberattacks — has learned to expect disruption but has not, in the main, learned to institutionalise response. Resilience spending is rising2, and board-level attention is real, yet more than half of firms still describe their posture as reactive, and 45% plan cross-functional scenario planning that few actually execute consistently12.

The carriers, ports and truckers will keep generating volatility; that much is certain. What BSI's research actually measures is whether the thousands of businesses downstream of the cranes and container yards will absorb that volatility with process, visibility and coordination — or continue to absorb it as margin erosion and consumer price rises. On the current evidence, the honest answer is: not yet, and 36% of them have already told you who will pay the difference1.