According to A.P. Moller-Maersk, more than 76% of European shippers saw supply chain disruption throughout 2024. Almost a quarter counted more than 20 disruptive incidents, and 1 in 3 subsequently had difficulty securing materials necessary for production.
With conditions set to be very similar in 2025, organizations must now find ways of reducing disruption in ocean freight, embracing risk (not just mitigating), and successfully building an anti-fragile supply chain.
Change is inevitable in modern supply chain management. As 2024 showed us, risks rapidly evolve and become more prevalent with time. Pure risk avoidance is no longer possible. So, proactive, agile, and adaptive risk management is essential to your success.
Poor supply chain visibility and an insufficient understanding of risk will only create additional risks, so this is where your focus should be. Without that visibility, it’s all too easy to increase freight spend, jeopardize relationships with suppliers and customers, and miss valuable opportunities as the market moves. Not to mention, you’ll expose yourself to unnecessary and entirely avoidable disruption.
In no particular order, here are the top ten risks your company needs to monitor this year, and some steps you can take to stay ahead of them.
Supply Chain Risk #1: Geopolitics
Widespread geopolitical unrest has thrown us into an era of unprecedented supply chain risk. Between the Russia-Ukraine war, developments in the Red Sea crisis, the growing use of cyber-attacks in international conflict, new tariffs imposed by the new US administration, and shifts towards nationalism and protectionism, there’s a huge amount to keep track of.
Every one of those risk areas is continuously developing, and they all have the potential to impact freight costs, freight availability, schedule reliability and timeliness, production continuity, and international trade. For example, Xeneta data shows that the last time President Trump ramped up tariffs on Chinese imports during the trade war in 2018, average spot rates spiked more than 70% on critical trade from China to the US West Coast.
Steps you can take
With most industries now highly reliant on globalized supply chains, those with the ability to do so may want to consider shifting towards a more regional focus – or in some cases, moving significant volumes to ‘safer’ territories. Onshoring and nearshoring can help you ensure that your access to critical resources isn’t constrained by geopolitical tensions and trade barriers. But it may lead to higher costs – especially in the short term.
One very popular response to geopolitical supply chain risks is to build and maintain a more diverse supplier* portfolio. If tensions create issues in one specific region, an organization can then easily switch to a supplier in a less impacted region, at a relatively low level of disruption.
Others may look to index-linked contracts to build additional reliability and robustness into their supply chains. The case for this type of contract has become more compelling since the Red Sea crisis begun, growing in popularity among shippers, freight forwarders and carriers alike.
However you choose to navigate 2025’s rapidly-evolving geopolitical circumstances, you should maintain a stricter level of compliance in your operations, even if governments allow for a less-stringent approach. This will reduce the risk of compliance violations and safeguard your supply chain against the enforcement of new regulations.
*manufacturer and/or supplier of goods and materials
Supply Chain Risk #2: Economic Instability
Following a tough 2024 characterized by persistent inflation and elevated geopolitical tensions for much of the world, the overall economic outlook for 2025 remains highly uncertain. According to the World Economic Forum, 56% of leading chief economists expect weaker global economic conditions in 2025, compared to only 17% expecting improvement. Economic instability is often a consequence of geopolitical instability and disproportionately impacts the most vulnerable in society. This in turn leads to social unrest, protest action, and calls for geopolitical change, creating further disruption and supply chain risk. As a result, today’s supply chain teams must be ready for frequent market turbulence.
One key area to watch is air cargo. Due to the temporary removal of US de minimis threshold for Chinese shipments, the average air cargo spot rate from China to the US plummeted nearly 50% from its December peak season high to USD 2.98 per kg in the week ending 9 March 2025, a level back to pre-pandemic. And only two weeks later in the week ending 23 March, it jumped over 20% to USD 3.67 per kg as the market sentiment temporarily recovered.
Steps you can take
As Emily Stausbøll, Senior Analyst at Xeneta notes “There is no single ‘best solution’ in such a complex market – it is a case of each shipper understanding their own supply chains, assessing the risks, and using data to gain insights and make evidence-based decisions.” While this quote originally focused on ocean freight, the same is true for air freight.
More than anything, developing an agile procurement strategy will allow for quick adjustments, such as shorter contract terms, diversifying transport modes, or dynamic pricing models during economic instability. Other approaches include diversifying your suppliers and strengthening existing supplier relationships, so you are more likely to receive better communication, flexibility, and support during challenging times. If you have the space, you might also consider increasing inventory buffers for critical materials to ease pressure.
Supply Chain Risk #3: AI and emerging technologies
Generative AI will power nearly 25% of all logistics KPIs by 2028 (Gartner). As it stands, one of the most popular AI use cases is contract risk analysis, with half of organizations predicted to be using AI-enabled tools to support their supplier contract negotiations by the year 2027. Additionally, the synergy between AI and IoT is creating a highly efficient operational environment, with AI expected to make supply chains 45% more effective in timely and error-free product delivery (Research and Markets).
Digital twin technology has also emerged as a key driver of supply chain growth. According to McKinsey, the global market for digital twins will grow about 30 to 40 percent annually in the next few years, reaching $125 billion to $150 billion by 2032. Digital twins create a digital model of a physical product, system, or process, including its functionality, features, and behavior. In supply chains, they’re helping organizations model strategic changes made in response to emerging risks. By enabling teams to validate the impact of those changes, digital twins can help organizations invest in the right areas and make the decisions that deliver the best impact for their business, customers, and global supply chain operations.
Steps you can take
While excitement around AI and its potential for value creation across the supply chain is high, it remains an opportunity that very few organizations are well positioned to make the most of today. It demands new skillsets, highly mature data strategies, and in a lot of cases, high capital investment.
For most teams, the best course of action is to proceed with caution. Build use cases, conduct pilots, and focus on delivering demonstrable ROI from AI in areas of specific relevance to your business. A critical part of this process is ensuring you have mature, unbiased freight data to feed your AI models. Without a strong data foundation, you risk making decisions based on incomplete or misleading insights.
This test and learn approach will help you identify where AI and other emerging technologies have the greatest potential to positively impact your supply chain operations. By taking this approach, you can showcase where appetite for change is high, where new technology can easily integrate with your existing tech stack, where challenges might lie, and ultimately, which pilots are worth scaling out.
Supply Chain Risk #4: The evolving priorities of CFOs
In 2025, Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) are navigating a complex landscape, balancing cost control with strategic investments. A survey by Egon Zehnde, in collaboration with Imperial College Business School, revealed that 72% of Chief Supply Chain Officers identify financial pressures as their primary challenge, followed by evolving customer demands and the need for operational efficiency.
To address these challenges, companies are focusing on reducing expenses in supply chain, manufacturing, and procurement. For instance, a major US-based apparel maker announced plans to achieve $100 million in savings, primarily through supply chain efficiencies (Oracle NetSuite, The CFO Agenda Report, 2025). Simultaneously, businesses are investing in artificial intelligence (AI) and cybersecurity to enhance resilience and operational effectiveness. AI is being leveraged for predictive analytics, inventory management, and logistics optimization, helping companies navigate trade disruptions and maintain agility. This dual approach of cost reduction and technological investment underscores the evolving priorities of CFOs in strengthening supply chains amid ongoing economic uncertainties.
Both are evolving from a tactical to a strategic approach, prioritizing proactive intelligence and decision-making over the reactive strategies of the past. This helps to build resilience, mitigate disruption, and enables businesses to drive positive change on their own terms, instead of waiting for external factors to force their hand.
Steps you can take
With 67% of executives prioritizing supply chain costs (BCG), the pressure is on to forecast smarter and avoid budget surprises. To stay ahead, decision-makers need a complete and data-driven view of the market. Start with global data coverage, including short- and long-term rate trends, schedule reliability, carbon emissions, surcharges, and spend benchmarks. With finance leaders 'paddling like crazy' to control costs, real-time rate intelligence helps cut excess spend and free up working capital.
Locking in the right deals can also help stabilize costs, protect working capital, and avoid overpaying upfront. Index-linked contracts offer shippers and LSPs a dynamic way to manage freight costs by attaching contracted rates to a market benchmark. This translates into greater price stability, risk mitigation, and fairer pricing. With tender acceptance ranging from 98% to just 75% over a freight cycle, indexing also improves strategic commitments by reducing friction and building trust in increasingly frequent and complex bidding cycles.
Paying just 10% above market on freight can cost millions in unnecessary COGS. Procurement teams need rate intelligence to negotiate smarter, keeping budgets in check and ensuring supply chain costs don’t erode profitability.
Supply Chain Risk #5: Extreme Weather Events
Extreme weather represents one of the most significant global risks to ocean freight. It was ranked second on the list of risks likely to cause a short-term material crisis on a global scale in the World Economic Forum’s 2025 Global Risk Report. And in the same report, environmental risks (including extreme weather events) made up the entire top four in a list of risks ranked by long-term severity.
In 2024 and early 2025, we’ve seen record-breaking temperatures, major floods in Europe and south Asia, wildfires devastating Europe and North America, and droughts spanning multiple continents.
Any one of those events can have a major impact on the global supply chain landscape and freight markets. Smoke from prolonged wildfires in Canada caused delayed deliveries by up to two days in 2023, while reduced visibility caused shipments in different areas to fall by up to 75%. Droughts in the Panama Canal have triggered slowdowns on major shipping channels and a 2024 flash flooding in Dubai was responsible for submerging an international airport.
Steps you can take
Shippers must evaluate their preferred routes and determine which carriers can increase shipping in anticipation of extreme weather events. This allows for flexibility to scale back operations or shift modes during tumultuous times. It can also be beneficial to balance between local suppliers to reduce transportation risks and global suppliers to diversify geographical risks.
For carriers, extreme weather events often trigger a surge in demand for crucial commodities such as home repair supplies and essential goods. At the same time, damage to manufacturing facilities, warehouses, and distribution centers can disrupt production and in turn, supply shortages. You could also face fuel shortages and port closures, resulting in heightened price volatility.
Supply Chain Risk #6: Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG)
Emissions and their impact on the environment fall under tight scrutiny, and as such, represent another critical supply chain risk area. Yet despite a growing focus on sustainability and corporate drives for greater ESG performance, emissions continue to rise.
In the first 10 months of 2024, total emissions from container shipping were up 13.8% globally compared to 2023 and were on track to set a new all-time record for the full year. In that time, 199.7 million tons of CO2 were emitted by container ships – 9.5% higher than in the first 10 months of 2021 (the current highest full year on record).
Rising emissions make the International Maritime Organization’s (IMO) target of net zero by or around 2050 seem extremely ambitious. But progress towards net zero goals continues, with new laws and regulations emerging which will put freight carriers under even greater scrutiny.
While policy gaps are delaying the scaling of green solutions, we expect to see ESG policies influencing three main areas:
- Supplier and carrier choices
- Ethical sourcing and procurement practices (Unilever is an industry leader for this)
- Enhanced supply chain transparency and real-time data—for reporting and informed decision-making
Steps you can take
Xeneta's Chief Analyst Peter Sand believes that data will be key to supporting the industry on the path to net zero and further regulation may be required to achieve the lofty emissions targets—as well as robust data reporting and analysis.
He said: “We talk about the introduction of EU-ETS emissions regulations in Europe, but perhaps some sort of global emissions trading scheme is required—or any other way of putting a price tag on carbon emissions.”
Sand also speaks to Xeneta’s Carbon Emissions Index (CEI) in partnership with Marine Benchmark, which provides insight on the carbon intensity of ocean freight shipping lines and carriers across 48 global trades.
“From an actionable point of view, it allows shippers to choose a carrier to transport their cargo with a proven track record for having a low carbon footprint. Maritime shipping also has an energy efficiency index to identify and action to take against the poorest performers from an emissions point of view. If you are a bad carbon emitter then you need to do something about it, whether that is slow down, de-rate the engine, or scrap the ship.”
Supply Chain Risk #7: Procurement transformation
While many areas of the modern business have completely transformed over the past two decades, procurement functions have (generally) seen far less transformation. However, as more and more organizations recognize the strategic value that procurement can deliver – from ensuring business continuity, to supporting ESG and sustainability efforts – that’s set to change.
In a recent Xeneta survey, we learned that 6 in 10 businesses have already changed their approach to ocean freight tendering in 2025. The key driver behind this is a frustration around having allocation removed or blank sailings, despite having a contract in place.
For most, the traditional tendering approaches are simply no longer fit for purpose. Amidst all the volatility caused by the myriad disruptive forces impacting the global freight landscape, it no longer makes sense to agree 12-month rates for every trade and every volume – especially if the LSP is likely to play the spot market anyway.
That’s just one example of a wider shift happening in procurement. Disruption is no longer the exception – it’s the rule. It’s a complex new reality for procurement teams, but one they are ready to adapt to, and build new processes, workflows, and capabilities to accommodate. However, if those changes aren’t managed or executed well, they can quickly transform from an opportunity into another supply chain risk.
Steps you can take
As procurement functions evolve to better manage continuous disruption, they need three key things to succeed:
- Reliable, timely insights and intelligence which enable proactive decision-making to break free from a continuous stream of purely reactive actions.
- Operations which are aligned with wider business objectives, to ensure all supply chain executives understand the relationship between freight rates and factors such as schedules, capacity, and carrier strategies.
- Metrics and autonomy to pursue outcomes other than final dollar savings and prioritize other important goals such as business continuity, sustainability, or the avoidance of schedule disruption.
Supply Chain Risk #8: Cyber-Attacks
Cyber-attacks are a predominant risk in modern supply chain management. While not malicious in its nature, 2024’s Crowdstrike outage showed us the incredibly disruptive impact cyber outages can have. It cost Fortune 500 companies alone more than $5 billion in direct losses, which should be enough to put outage-causing cyber-attacks high on any supply chain team’s risk agenda for 2025.
What’s more concerning is that only 13% of businesses review the cybersecurity risks posed by their immediate suppliers, and only 7% review their wider supply chain (2022 Security Breaches Survey). For cybercriminals, the complexity of today’s supply chains makes them an enticing target. Comprised of multiple vendors, manufacturers and other third-party organizations (often with access to centralized data and systems) there’s potential for a real domino effect of destruction when it comes to a data breach or cyberattack.
Steps you can take
Choose supply chain systems vendors with a proven record of maintaining stringent cybersecurity protocols. Limit personnel access to your systems to those necessary for shipment processing, and maintain the strong physical security of your facilities. Penetration testing, continuous monitoring, and modern IT skillsets can also reduce cyber-attack risk.
Supply Chain Risk #9: Data Integrity and Quality
Data integrity refers to the quality and strength of data for use in supply chain management. According to Gartner, poor data quality costs organizations at least $12.9 million a year on average. For example, the wrong freight procurement data could lead to misinformed strategies, costing your organization millions in delays, direct costs, and reputational damage.
With AI rising up many organizations’ agendas, high quality data is more important than ever. When using AI and Machine Learning models, what you get out is only as good as what you put in. So, if you push ahead with AI initiatives without first addressing underlying data integrity and quality issues, at best you’ll fail to realize your technology’s full potential, and at worst you’ll cause significant negative outcomes for your business.
Steps you can take
Validate data for accuracy and timeliness. Bad or outdated data is worse than having no data at all, and systems that leverage real-time data monitoring can be crucial in increasing data integrity and quality. Shippers who collaborate with data can increase data integrity and decrease ocean freight spending. You may also want to consider using blockchain-based technologies to eliminate erroneous changes in data retroactively.
Supply Chain Risk #10: Ongoing talent gaps
Together, The Great Resignation of 2021 and the following recession-like tailwinds have caused a skills gap in the procurement function and supply chain industry. And while the global talent shortage fell by around 2% in 2024, this gap remains large, and a significant operational challenge for supply chain teams.
In response, we’re seeing the rise of “T-shaped” procurement teams. These refer to individuals who possess both a deep expertise in one area, and a broad set of skills or knowledge in related areas. T-shaped teams suit the volatile nature of the modern supply chain by reducing dependencies between teams, resulting in faster decision-making and aligned priorities. They also help foster team ownership, and reduce handoffs between knowledge silos, avoiding information loss.
Steps you can take
DHL Supply Chain has indicated the procurement skills shortage falls to four main issues: demographics, a need for modern skills, cost cutting measures, and a lack of training programs.
With this in mind, recognize where you have skills gaps (presently or forecasted) and invest in education, mentorship, and training. This will foster a culture of continuous learning, as well as stronger employee engagement and retention. Your team’s improved knowledge will also positively circle back into the overall success of your supply chain.
Where your team is already at capacity, leverage procurement technology and automation in the shape of e-sourcing tools, spend analysis software, and other procurement technologies. This will free up your team for more value-adding activities and improve the efficiency and effectiveness in routine takes.
Proactive Risk Management Is Key to Ocean Freight Success.
In an era of continuous disruption, being reactive to risks is no longer enough to ensure the success of your business and the stability and efficiency of your supply chain and freight operations.
To mitigate these risks effectively, and transform some of them into powerful value creation opportunities, you need to enable well-informed, proactive decision-making — and that demands full market transparency and predictability.
Discover solutions as dynamic as your procurement challenges and start modernizing the way you buy and sell freight today.
