NEARSHORING – Reshaping Supply Chains

 

Editorial

Dear Readers,

When people have talked about supply chain alignment over the last 20 years, they have often ended up saying that global sourcing is the order of the day. However, the crises in recent years, together with the war in Ukraine, have shown how fragile many supply chains are and have led to a change in thinking. To ensure supply and meet sustainability requirements, Europe is once more regaining its relevance as a procurement market.

In our cover story, we reveal which factors are key for nearshoring and building local supply chains – and how you can shape the process. Together with external experts, we have scrutinized the procurement markets in Spain, Portugal, and Morocco. Resilience is an essential consideration when building local supply chains and diversifying your supplier portfolio. This is corroborated by our latest risk management research. Added to this is the increasing importance of sustainability risks: 56 % of those surveyed have already implemented the sustainability criteria set out in the German Supply Chain Due Diligence Act, or have plans to do so.

In this edition of our People@INVERTO series, we introduce you to three new Managing Directors: Gökhan Yüzgülec is currently developing our new Hamburg office; while Philipp Polterauer and Mohamad Kaivan are bolstering the INVERTO leadership in our Vienna and London offices respectively.

In the years that followed, global supply chains were established in various industries.

The many benefits of nearshoring

A good three years after the pandemic, interest has subsided slightly. Logistics costs have temporarily fallen again and the risk of supply chain failures has decreased. Yet the number of early adopters is on the increase: Companies looking to the future, such as fashion giant C&A, have reverted to producing in Germany again after over 20 years; ski specialist Salomon is bringing production of its footwear back to its high-tech factory in France; and IT service providers are suddenly no longer moving to India but to the Algarve in Portugal. The country scores with high quality coupled with low labor costs compared to Northern Europe and has now received so many requests to establish company bases that sometimes they would get the response: “Sorry, we haven’t got any more capacity.”

The goal is to create a healthy mix of regional, national, and international suppliers. Where regionalization is feasible and makes economic sense, this can be considered.

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