Business

Study finds 46 per cent of businesses believe there will be an increase in supply chain disruptions until 2030

The survey found there is still uncertainty in the market about how companies will adapt to become environmentally compliant

Some 92% of respondents admitted their supply chains are not fully ready to support service-oriented business models or offer sustainable solutions to their customers. Photograph:: Tom Honan

Fiona Keeley
Tue Jul 2 2024 - 00:01

Some 46 per cent of business leaders believe there will be an increase in supply chain disruptions until 2030, according to a study by PwC. Just 8 per cent of industry leaders have fully revamped their supply chains to meet these disruptive trends.

The findings in PwC’s Global Reinventing Supply Chains 2030 show that geopolitical crises, climate change and technological advancements such as artificial intelligence (AI) are the main factors that cause disruptions to supply chains globally.

Some 92 per cent of respondents admitted their supply chains were not fully ready to support service-oriented business models or offer sustainable solutions to their customers, with only 4 per cent of respondents having fully adapted their supply chains in light of new technologies on the market.

Some 39 per cent of responding companies believe that artificial intelligence will have a long-term positive impact on their supply chain.

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The study highlighted the need for businesses to rethink their supply chain and introduce plans such as increasing transparency, integrating AI and robotics and collaborating with stakeholders to resolve issues quickly.

The survey found that there is still uncertainty in the market about how companies will adapt to become environmentally compliant. The survey found 40 per cent of companies recognise that making their supply chain environmentally compliant is a highly disruptive process, both now and into the future. Only 12 per cent of all companies reported that their supply chain have been fully remodelled to be ESG compliant.

Áine Brassill, supply chain and operations transformation partner at PwC, said: “Legislators globally are tightening regulatory requirements while consumers are increasingly expecting companies to push their environmental and social efforts”.

Companies have to comply with the environmental requirements such as the new EU Supply Chain Regulation. Companies “can’t have everything [so it’s] trying to make a trade off,” said Ms Brassill.

On the workforce side of business, a quarter of respondents believe that severe talent and workforce scarcity will increasingly disrupt supply chains by 2030, up from 15 per cent in 2024. Four out of 10 companies have initiatives under way to regionalise their supply chains.

Mark McKeever, director, procurement and supply chain practice at PwC, said: “Supply chain transformation is a complex challenge that must happen alongside daily business operations. In Ireland, with our proximity to US and European markets together with our strong foreign direct investment ecosystem, there is a clear opportunity from a developing trend of companies looking to nearshore elements of their supply chain activities.”

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