Global transport and logistics company Kuehne + Nagel International AG reports more than 100 container ships have been rerouted from the Red Sea around Africa to avoid Iran-backed Houthi militants in Yemen who attack commercial vessels with missiles and drones.
Bloomberg released two headlines early Wednesday detailing Kuehne + Nagel’s update on the Red Sea. The logistics firm said 103 container ships have detoured around the Cape of Good Hope, lengthening travel time by 1 to 2 weeks. It expects the number of detours to rise in the coming days.
For commercial vessels still transiting the vital waterway that connects to the Suez Canal, Bloomberg noted in a separate report that the cost of insuring jumped this week from about .1% to .2% of the hull value to .5%. A $100 million vessel must pay about $500,000 per voyage.
Increased insurance costs plus more extended travel around the Cape of Good Hope only suggest snarled supply chains and increased prices of goods.
“Both options of increased premiums and rerouting around Africa will see a knock-on effect on the price of goods,” said Toby Vallance, Executive Committee Member of the London Forum of Insurance Lawyers.
Euronav NV Chief Executive Officer Alexander Saverys told Bloomberg TV that the disruption in the Red Sea “will slow down the trade because we will have to wait for a convoy to pass through.” The petroleum tanker giant halted shipments through the Red Sea early this week and won’t transit the region unless there are military escorts. Several other major shipping firms stopped traveling through the area this week (read: here).
Called “Operation Prosperity Guardian,” the Pentagon hasn’t released exact details on how it plans to escort commercial vessels through the conflict region. Vincent Clerc, the chief executive of container shipping giant A.P. Moller-Maersk A/S, said it could take several weeks for the task force to become operational.
Energy-Averaging Systems and Complexity: A Recipe For Collapse
Supply chain disruptions and the product shortages that result have become a growing concern over the past couple of years and the reasons for these are as varied as the people providing the ‘analysis’. Production delays. Covid-19 pandemic. Pent-up consumer demand. Central bank monetary policy. Government economic stimulus. Consumer hoarding. Supply versus demand basics. Labour woes. Vaccination mandates. Union strikes. The number and variety of competing narratives is almost endless.
I have been once again reminded of the vagaries of our supply chains, the disruptions that can result, and our increasing dependence upon them with the unprecedented torrential rain and flood damage across many parts of British Columbia, Canada; and, of course, similar disruptions have occurred across the planet.
Instead of a recognition that perhaps a rethinking is needed of the complexities of our current systems and the dependencies that result from them, particularly in light of this increasingly problematic supply situation, we have politicians (and many in the media) doubling-down on the very systems that have helped to put us in the various predicaments we are encountering.
Our growing reliance on intensive-energy and other resource systems is not viewed as any type of dependency that places us in the crosshairs of ecological overshoot and unforeseen circumstances, but as a supply and demand conundrum that can be best addressed via our ingenuity and technology. Once again the primacy of a political and/or economic worldview, as opposed to an ecological one, shines through in our interpretation of world events; and of course the subsequent ‘solutions’ proposed.
Our dependence upon complex and thus fragile long-distance supply chains (over which we may have little control whatsoever) is not perceived as a consequence of resource constraints manifesting themselves on a finite planet with a growing population and concomitant resource requirements but as a result of ‘organisational’ weaknesses that can be overcome with the right political and/or economic ‘solutions’. Greater centralisation. More money ‘printing’. Increased taxes. Significant investment in ‘green’ energy. Massive wealth ‘redistribution’. Expansive infrastructure construction. Higher wages. Rationing. Forced vaccinations. The proposed ‘solutions’ are almost endless in nature and scope.
All of these ‘solutions’ have one thing in common: they attempt to ‘tweak’ our current economic/political systems. They fail to recognise that perhaps the weakness or ‘problem’ is with the system itself. A system that has built-in constraints that pre/history, and population biology, would suggest result in eventual failure.
Archaeologist Joseph Tainter discusses the benefits and vulnerabilities of ‘energy averaging systems’ (i.e., trade) that contributed to the collapse of the Chacoan society in his seminal text The Collapse of Complex Societies.
He argued that the energy averaging system employed early on took advantage of the Chacoan Basin’s diversity, distributing environmental vagaries of food production in a mutually-supportive network that increased subsistence security and accommodated population growth. At the beginning, this system was improved by adding more participants and increasing diversity but as time passed duplication of resource bases increased and less productive areas were added causing the buffering effect to decline.
This fits entirely with Tainter’s basic thesis that as problem-solving organisations, complex societies gravitate towards the easiest-to-implement and most beneficial ‘solutions’ to begin with. As time passes, the ‘solutions’ become more costly to society in terms of ‘investments’ (e.g., time, energy, resources, etc.) and the beneficial returns accrued diminish. This is the law of marginal utility, or diminishing returns, in action.
As return on investment dropped for those in the Chacoan Basin that were involved in the agricultural trade system, communities began to withdraw their participation in it. The collapse of the Chacoan society was not due primarily to environmental deterioration (although that did influence behaviour) but because the population choose to disengage when the challenge of another drought raised the costs of participation to a level that was more than the benefits of remaining. In other words, the benefits amassed by participation in the system declined over time and environmental inconsistencies finally pushed regions to remove themselves from a system that no longer provided them security of supplies; participants either moved out of the area or relocalised their economies. The return to a more simplified and local dependence emerged as supply chains could no longer provide security.
Having just completed rereading William Catton Jr.’s Overshoot, I can’t help but take a slightly different perspective than the mainstream ones that are being offered through our various media; what Catton terms an ecological perspective. And one that is influenced by Tainter’s thesis: our supply chain disruptions are increasingly coming under strain from our being in overshoot and encountering diminishing returns on our investments in them (and this is particularly true for one of the most fundamental resources that underpin our global industrial societies: fossil fuels).
What should we do? It’s one of the things I’ve stressed for some years in my local community (not that it seems to be having much impact, if any): we need to use what dwindling resources remain to relocalise as much as possible but particularly food production, procurement of potable water, and supplies of shelter needs for the regional climate so that supply disruptions do not result in a massive ‘collapse’ (an additional priority should also be to ‘decommission’ some of our more ‘dangerous’ creations such as nuclear power plants and biosafety labs).
Pre/history shows that relocalisation is going to happen eventually anyways, and in order to avert a sudden loss of important supplies that would have devastating consequences (especially food, water, and shelter), we should prepare ourselves now while we have the opportunity and resources to do so.
Instead, what I’ve observed is a doubling-down as it were of the processes that have created our predicament: pursuit of perpetual growth on a finite planet, using political/economic mechanisms along with hopes of future technologies to rationalise/justify this approach. While such a path may help to reduce the stress of growing cognitive dissonance, it does nothing to help mitigate the coming ‘storms’ that will increasingly disrupt supply chains.
The inability of our ‘leaders’ to view the world through anything but a political/economic paradigm and its built-in short-term focus has blinded them to the reality that we do not stand above and outside of nature or its biological principles and systems. We are as prone to overshoot and the consequences that come with it as any other species. And because of their blindness (and most people’s uncritical acceptance of their narratives) we are rushing towards a cliff that is directly ahead. In fact, perhaps we’ve already left solid ground but just haven’t realised it yet because, after all, denial is an extremely powerful drug.
The El Niño weather pattern has sparked a drought this year across Central America that is creating extreme congestion at the Panama Canal, prompting some ships to turn around and seek alternative routes.
New shipping data from Bloomberg shows two liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) carriers, Pyxis Pioneer and Sunny Bright, recently turned around within 10 miles (16 kilometers) of the canal before sailing away.
Both vessels have a capacity of 158,000 cubic meters of LPG and were en route to major LPG facilities in the US Gulf. Their current destination, however, remains to be determined.
The canal relies on rainwater from Gatun Lake, a nearby artificial reservoir, to feed the lock system. The lack of rainfall this year because of El Nino has led canal authorities to impose draft and sailing restrictions.
One week ago, the Panama Canal Authority (PCA) said October was “the driest since the earliest registers, 73 years ago” and “caused by the El Nino phenomenon continues to impact the Panama Canal’s reservoir system and, as a result, water availability has been reduced.”
PCA has reduced the number of booking slots for vessels to transit the canal from 31 to 25 this month and will be reduced by nearly 30% to 18 by Feb. 1, 2024. In comparison, the maximum number of sustainable bookings is between 38-40 per day.
The most common vessels transiting the crucial waterway are dry bulk, containers, chemicals, and LPG vessels.
While the major supply chain disruptions from the pandemic have declined, new challenges are arising due to the low water levels at the Panama Canal, causing fresh supply chain issues.
Global food prices increased the most in 1.5 years as trade disruptions from the El Nino weather phenomenon battered agricultural-producing countries, and Russia’s exit from a crucial UN-backed agriculture deal stoked supply concerns.
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) reported Friday that the global food index, which tracks monthly changes in the international prices of globally-traded food commodities, averaged 123.9 in July, up 1.3% from the previous month.
The FAO Food Price Index’s July print was the largest monthly gain since March 2022.
FAO explained the FAO Vegetable Oil Price subcomponent of the index was responsible for the monthly increase:
The increase was driven by a sharp jump in the FAO Vegetable Oil Price Index, which rose 12.1 percent from June after seven months of consecutive declines. International sunflower oil prices rebounded by more than 15 percent in the month, due mostly to renewed uncertainties surrounding the exportable supplies after the Russian Federation’s decision to end implementation of the Black Sea Grain Initiative. World prices for palm, soy and rapeseed oils increased on concerns over output prospects in leading producing countries.
Also, the FAO All Rice Price Index increased 2.8% on the month and 19.7% on the year due to “India’s 20 July prohibition of non-parboiled Indica exports fostered expectations of greater sales in other origins, amplifying upward pressure already exerted on prices by seasonally tighter supplies and Asian purchases,” the report said.
This upward pressure on rice prices “raises substantial food security concerns for a large swathe of the world population, especially those that are most poor and who dedicate a larger share of their incomes to purchase food,” FAO warned.
A survival garden isn’t a doom’s day garden. It’s a garden built around a mix of permanent agriculture, or permaculture, and annual vegetable and fruit plants. It’s designed to help you avoid supply chain issues, and provide nutritious food for yourself, and your family. It is a garden of abundance.
There are many concerns about supply chain issues, especially after the floods, disasters, and challenges of the past few years. A survival garden is a garden designed to be low maintenance, and high yield. It is a garden built on sustainable principles, with a healthy mix of annual plants and perennial plants. While many survivalist gardeners focus on calories and food yield, calorie dense food can be bland without the addition of herbs for flavor and vegetables for variety and nutrition. Victory gardens are a type of survival garden, with an emphasis on vegetables, but not necessarily calories. (You can read more about victory gardens here). Calories offer energy that is necessary in a survival situation.
Your survival garden should focus on the plants and fruits you enjoy. Maybe the ones that are expensive to procure where you are. Maybe you want to focus on the “dirty dozen” to have the cleanest strawberries, carrots, onions, and garlic possible. This garden can be a vegetable garden, or it can be a permaculture garden, or it can have hybrid elements of both.
I started my garden as an annual vegetable garden with perennial fruit along with culinary and medicinal herbs, but I am slowly adding more and more perennials: Perennial vegetables, fruit trees, nuts, and berries. Every year I add a few more perennial fruit and nuts.
As the price of everything, including debt, continues to soar, life is getting harder and harder for the UK’s heavily indebted businesses.
Business insolvencies in the UK surged by 57% in 2022, to 22,109, according to the latest data from the Insolvency Service, a UK government agency that deals with bankruptcies and companies in liquidation. It is the highest number of insolvencies registered annually since 2009, at the height of the Global Financial Crisis.
Last year “was the year the insolvency dam burst,” said Christina Fitzgerald, the president of R3, the insolvency and restructuring trade body. Insolvencies peaked in the fourth quarter, underscoring the compounding pressures on companies grappling with surging costs and rapidly slowing economic activity.
“Supply-chain pressures, rising inflation and high energy prices have created a ‘trilemma’ of headwinds which many management teams will be experiencing simultaneously for the first time,” Samantha Keen, UK turnround and restructuring strategy partner at EY-Parthenon and president of the Insolvency Practitioners Association (IPA), told the Financial Times. “This stress is now deepening and spreading to all sectors of the economy as falling confidence affects investment decisions, contract renewals and access to credit.”
Other headwinds include soaring interest rates, falling consumer demand, nationwide strikes, lingering Brexit-induced supply chain issues, an epidemic of quiet quitting and both chronic and acutely bad government.
Closest to the Edge
None of this, of course, should come as a surprise. Of all the large economies in Europe, the UK’s is arguably closest to the cliff edge. As newspaper headlines trumpeted this week, the UK economy this year will probably fare worse than Russia’s sanction-hit economy, according to the IMF’s latest forecasts. But then the same could be said of many other European economies, including Germany and Italy.
Pigs are judged at the Dorset County Show, Dorchester, England, on Sept. 4, 2022. (Finnbarr Webster/Getty Images)
In an emergency press conference, the National Farmers Union (NFU) said the government needed to step in to assist farmers who are under severe strain.
The British farming industry is facing major issues across almost all sectors, with the price of animal feed and nitrogen fertiliser, and fuel skyrocketing. The union warned that yields of crops will likely slump to record lows this year with farmers also considering reducing the size of their herds.
Under Threat
In the emergency press conference, NFU president Minette Batters said that “shoppers up and down the country have for decades had a guaranteed supply of high-quality affordable food produced to some of the highest animal welfare, environmental, and food safety standards in the world.”
“That food, produced with care by British farmers, is critical to our nation’s security and success. But British food is under threat,” she added.
“We have already seen the egg supply chain crippled under the pressure caused by these issues and I fear the country is sleepwalking into further food supply crises, with the future of British fruit and vegetable supplies in trouble. We need government and the wider supply chain to act now—tomorrow could well be too late.”
According to the NFU, since 2019 the price of wholesale gas has increased by 650 percent, with nitrogen fertiliser up by 240 percent and agricultural diesel up 73 percent. Furthermore, animal feed raw material has increased by 75 percent.
Nearly 1 in 10 NFU members who produce beef said they were considering reducing the size of their herd in the next 12 months.
A conversation with the legendary Substacker Doomberg, in which he discusses big picture topics like the economy, government policies, and emergency preparedness.
A bit about my guest: Doomberg is a fellow Substack author – one of the most successful writers on the network. They write about economics, finance, energy, and a bit of politics. I highly recommend checking them out, especially if you are looking for a break from the standard news cycle. Doomberg is consistently unique in its coverage.
I can’t remember for certain, but I believe Doomberg was my initial introduction to Substack. In April of 2021, I caught them on an episode of the Grant William’s Podcast and was intrigued by, not only the Green Chicken, but their clear and seamless articulation of complex economic matters. Their rise has been meteoric, impressive to watch, and well-earned. It inspired me to write my own thoughts on a Substack (after failing to convince my friends to debate these issues with me). I only have 1.6k followers, but the journey has launched a new career path for me as I published my work at various mainstream outlets as well. Just two weeks ago, I accepted a ‘Business Reporter’ role at the Epoch Times.
I’ve had brief run-ins with Doomberg in some of my previous jobs, and they were nice enough to participate in this discussion with me. We start off by asking why Doomberg is a “prepper” and dive into various topics like economics and his view of an ideal government.
Runaway energy inflation has taken a toll on European industry, but another threat is looming.
Europe’s two biggest fertilizer suppliers, Russia and Belarus have retaliated against European sanctions by cutting off fertilizer exports.
The fact remains that the global food chain, especially its European links, is not in a good place right now.
Runaway energy price inflation has wreaked havoc on European industrial activity, with the heaviest consumers taking the brunt. Aluminum and steel smelters are shutting down because of energy costs. Chemical producers are moving to the United States. BASF is planning a permanent downsizing.
There is, however, a bigger problem than all these would constitute for their respective industries. Fertilizer makers are also shutting down their plants. And fertilizer imports are down because the biggest suppliers of fertilizers for Europe were Russia and Belarus, both currently under sanctions.
Both countries have retaliated against the sanctions by cutting off exports of fertilizers to Europe, and European officials repeating that fertilizer exports are not sanctioned is not really helping.
Russia accounts for 45 percent of the global ammonia nitrate supply, according to figures from the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy cited by the FT. But it also accounts for 18 percent of the supply of potash—potassium-containing salts that are one of the main gradients of fertilizers—and 14 percent of phosphate exports.
Belarus is a major exporter of fertilizers, too, especially potash. But Belarus has been under EU sanctions since 2021 on human rights allegations, and unlike Russia, it has seen its fertilizer industry targeted by these sanctions. This has made for an unfortunate coincidence for Europe and its food security.
HANOI — Gasoline stations in and around Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam’s economic engine, are being forced to suspend operations due to shortages of the fuel.
A tangle of reactions to a constrained petroleum market — including government price controls and distributors’ decreasing profits — has worsened the matter, increasing the burden on domestic refineries.
While these refineries are moving to increase gasoline production, it will take time for Vietnam to fully solve the fundamental problems behind its petroleum crisis.
The government in mid-October called on two refineries to boost output to the maximum extent possible in a bid to meet domestic demand. The government also asked distributors to speed deliveries to gas stations.
PetroVietnam, the country’s largest state-run oil company, has responded by raising the operation rate of its Dung Quat refinery in the central province of Quang Ngai to 109% from 107%. A refinery executive said the rate can be pushed to 110% or even higher, should the government make further requests.
Oil refineries generally save some production capacity even when declaring they are running at 100%. When they crank up production during emergencies, their operation rate can surpass 100%.
At the Nghi Son refinery in the northern province of Thanh Hoa, in which Idemitsu Kosan of Japan has a major stake, production at the beginning of the year had to be substantially cut as it failed to procure sufficient funds to import crude oil. Since April, however, the refinery has been operating near full capacity. According to a refinery source, the plant can afford to increase its operation rate.
You probably do not spend much time thinking about barges. This is something that you ought to change.
The barge industry is quite important. It’s crucial for moving aluminum, petroleum, fertilizer and coal, particularly on the Mississippi River and its tributaries. About 60% of the grain and 54% of the soybeans for U.S. export are moved via the noble barge. Barges touch more than a third of our exported coal as well.
Right now the barge industry — and all of us who depend on its wares — is mired in a crisis. Water levels on the Mississippi River Basin are at its lowest point in more than a decade.
The timing for such a drought is pretty bad. Right now is harvest season, so farmers are looking to move their wares. Ongoing labor strife on the nation’s railways also renders that backup network uncertain.
Halted or slowed barge traffic is worrisome for the world at large too. American exports of coal are key right now as Europe faces a massive energy crisis heading into winter. “Any snags threaten to disrupt trade at a time when coal demand is soaring as Europe weathers an energy crisis exacerbated by Russia’s war in Ukraine,” as Bloomberg reported on Oct. 6.
Exports of grain and soybeans are also important right now, because we’re facing a shortage of those commodities amid the war in Ukraine.
“We’re taking a huge capacity hit,” said Sandor Toth, president of barge market intelligence firm Criton Corp.
The drought caused a 100-boat clog last week
Low water levels and dredging shuttered barge traffic heading north and south on the Mississippi last week. At one point, more than 100 towboats and 2,000 barges were stuck waiting…
Ports, airports remain closed in wake of hurricane
A section of the Sanibel Causeway was lost due to the effects of Hurricane Ian in Fort Myers, Fla. (Photo: Steve Helber/Associated Press)
Thursday’s news on Hurricane Ian and its impact on various sectors of the freight industry from reports by the FreightWaves reporters and market experts, as well as pertinent social media posts. This file will be updated throughout the day as more news comes in, so please check back.
Floridians are starting to assess the damage created by Hurricane Ian a day after it slammed into the Gulf Coast as a massive Category 4 storm. By Thursday morning, Ian had been downgraded to a tropical storm, but a threat remains as it continues to bring heavy winds and rain to the state.
As of 11:54 a.m. EDT, more than 2.6 million Floridians were without power, with some counties, including Hardee, almost completely in the dark.
Nearly 20% of Tampa gas stations have reported fuel shortage and access issues.
As previously reported, the logistics impacts could last for weeks — or longer.
Here’s the latest as of 11:30 a.m. EDT:
Roads and bridges
In a news conference Thursday morning in Tallahassee, Gov. Ron DeSantis said the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) is working to make sure roads and interstate highways are open.
Most of Interstate 75 remains open, according to FDOT, with some interruptions.
“Alligator Alley on I-75 across into Collier and Lee County is open and flowing,” DeSantis said. “I-75 south through Charlotte County is open and flowing. Portions of Lee County they are still looking at.”
Additionally, part of the Sanibel Causeway Bridge, a major bridge that connects Fort Myers to Sanibel Island, has been washed out.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
U.S. agriculture has been facing a poor harvest this year, aggravating the global food supply crisis, industry executives have said.
The supply of food worldwide has been tight, since Russia’s war in Ukraine cut off vital shipments of resources needed to make fertilizer and grain products from the region.
Several high-level executives from big agricultural firms such as Bayer, Corteva, Archer Daniels Midland, and Bunge, told The Wall Street Journal that it will take at least two more years of good harvests in North and South America to ease the supply pressures.
“The current market expectation is that global grain and oilseeds markets need two consecutive normal crop years to stabilize global supplies,” said Chuck Magro, chief executive of Corteva, at an investor presentation this week.
This year’s grain harvest has fallen below normal yields in the West, hindering efforts to restock global crop supplies he explained.
The United States and South America, two of the world’s major crop exporters, faced persistent drought conditions this summer.
The hot summer worsened drought conditions in states throughout the U.S. Grain Belt, which saw a major reduction in the harvest due to lack of water and a wet spring planting season earlier in the year.
The Agriculture Department announced on Sept. 12, that it had lowered its nationwide corn production estimates to 13.9 billion bushels.
This is 3 percent lower than its projections in August, about 8 percent lower than the total amount harvested last year.
Projections for soybean production estimates in September were down 3 percent from August, down slightly from 2021.
Maintaining a Food Truce
Global recession fears have also weighed on food commodity markets and the prolonged conflict in Ukraine has not helped matters.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
US cotton prices continued to surge above the boom days of 2010-11 after a massive crop estimate cut by the USDA, shocking Wall Street analysts and traders, due primarily to a megadrought scorching farmland of Texas, according to Bloomberg.
Futures in New York for December delivery were up 4.5% to $1.1359 a pound and up more than 21% this month.
“I don’t think you can put a top on prices right now,” Louis Barbera, the managing partner for VLM Commodities, told Bloomberg.
“I have been going to Texas for more than ten years, and this is by far the absolute worst I have ever seen, said Barbera.
What Barbera is referring to is the drought situation in Texas. The long stretches of triple-digit temperatures and limited rainfall this summer have turned vast amounts of farmland to dust, hurting cotton farmers in the South Plains of West Texas.
Last Friday, the USDA’s bigger-than-expected cut to domestic cotton crop stunned many on Wall Street. Crop output plunged to 12.57 million bales, the lowest in a decade. The cut also pushed down the US from the world’s third-largest producer to the world’s fourth.
Barbera said the western Texas region (around Lubbock and Lamesa), the epicenter of America’s cotton-growing belt, has “literally nothing” in fields that are just desert sand. He said fields that had drip irrigation were harvestable, but ones that weren’t weren’t salvageable.
How bad is the heat and drought in Texas? Outside of Amarillo, what was a cotton crop. pic.twitter.com/dp77GYUxOd
“If cotton is not readily available from other sources, the scarcity of supply from the US could support prices globally, said Jon Devine, supply-chain economist for research Cotton Inc.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Thirty two years ago Germans enthusiastically took down the Berlin wall. Now, captured by cunning Anglo-Saxon global elites, Germans are helping other European “useful idiots” to erect a much higher and thicker wall to cut themselves off from Russia leading them into a war economy. But as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has warned… “the approach has clearly failed — sanctions have backfired — and our car now has 4 four flat tires” … Question: vehicles don´t carry more than 2 spare tires on them, do they? So, one quick and innocent way to explain such unfathomable European miscalculation is to assume the EU leadership is immersed in a deep hypnotic trance and just blindly following US-UK instructions under Stoltenberg-Johnson war-mongering policies. Per “The Telegraph” Ref #1 https://www.rt.com/news/559682-johnson-uk-nato-ukriaine Ref #2 https://www.rt.com/news/559785-orban-eu-gas-war-economy/
suicidal non-supply
The supply lines that up to 2022 successfully linked Europe and Russia took decades of very hard work to develop. This now means that almost all of such over-abundant contracts necessarily have no effective substitute because (a) no other vendors have such high quality at low price plus decades of vetting and proven experience + (b) the un-replaceable short freight distance and shipping time from nearby Russia. So, by definition, both (a) + (b) mean that today no equivalent supply lines could ever be found no matter how much Europe tried simply because it would be either too soon or too far …and always too hard and too pricey. So short cuts will be taken and corners rounded-off…. Been there, done that, got the T-shirt. The impact of the above cannot be overstated though as the now-broken Euro-Russian supply lines were essential for the Just-In-Time strategy that Europe and world markets still require and cannot wait years to develop and iron out. Logistics 101: proven experience and performance with excellent price plus quick delivery from nearby sources cannot be substituted fast enough, or possibly ever…
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
