AS I watched the Rolex Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race tracker update the positions for boats sailing into 35 knots, hard on the wind off the NSW coast, the parallel to global supply chains feels uncomfortably precise. The hard slog of the first 24 hours of this year’s race was a clear-eyed reckoning of where we are right now, what forces are acting on us, and whether our current course still holds under pressure.
That is the lesson 2025 kept reinforcing. Not because we faced one defining shock, but because we absorbed layered volatility: a trade policy rollercoaster, persistent geopolitical risk, looming structural overcapacity, accelerating infrastructure consolidation, and the rising importance of establishing a digital strategy.
None of these dynamics were new. What changed in 2025? They began to compound, creating second-order effects that moved faster than annual planning cycles, stressed inventories, and created mini and multiple peak seasons.
The year 2025 will be remembered more for decision-making than market outcomes. Uncertainty became the operating environment. While making the right decision was an advantage this year, said decisions rarely came from having perfect data. Rather, it resulted from having just enough reliable insight and acting early enough to adjust routings, avoid detention, or delay a commitment.
Some companies and managers excel in firefight-mode, showing tactical agility. But without strategic alignment, this skill doesn’t build resilience. When daily decisions lack a cohesive strategy, there is no forward progression or fire prevention.
The organisations that navigated 2025 best didn’t try to “hold” a position. They built discipline, created options, and the governance to move quickly without losing their heading. That discipline - knowing where you are, and choosing the next course with intent, is what will separate performance from survival in 2026.
The Red Sea is a capacity lever
The Red Sea narrative in 2025 wasn’t about disruption, it was about conditionality. Risk ebbed and flowed with headlines about potential ceasefires and long pauses in attacks, but routing never fully normalised. That hesitation wasn’t just security-driven. A full Suez reopening would instantly release suppressed capacity into an already oversupplied market, and carriers have been deliberately cautious. CMA CGM’s approach is instructive: not a wholesale return, but controlled re-entry, selectively reintroducing Suez on specific loops to shorten rotations without triggering a sudden capacity shock.
If normalisation does arrive, it will not be gradual. Transit times will compress by up to two weeks, equipment will reappear in the wrong places, and vessel bunching will stress northern European port gateways before rates reset. Contract structures that functioned under disruption will not translate cleanly into a faster, fluid network. Any advantage will be brief: spot markets will react in weeks, not quarters, and the beneficiaries will be those who have already strategised the switch and know which operational and commercial levers to pull.
The bearing for 2026: strategies must work under both prolonged disruption and sudden normalisation. If your contracts, routing logic, or inventory policies only function in one state, they are incomplete.
Larger carriers will continue to strengthen their control
Looking ahead to 2026, the market faces meaningful structural overcapacity, minimal scrapping, and heavy delivery schedules amid modest demand growth. Consolidation, service withdrawals, and alliance recalibration are no longer theoretical possibilities. They are operational realities being negotiated now.
For shippers, this creates asymmetric risk. The cheapest rate will often come from the carrier under the most financial pressure. That carrier may also be the one most likely to withdraw service, reduce frequency, or sacrifice schedule reliability to preserve cash.
The bearing for 2026: Resilience comes from diversification and intelligence. Knowing which carriers are under financial pressure or gaining strength matters more than chasing the lowest rate.
Terminals became strategic assets, not passive infrastructure
One of the most significant shifts in 2025 was the quiet rise of terminals from being neutral infrastructure to becoming active levers of network control. This idea isn’t new. Years ago, we worked on a project that identified ports or terminals as the fourth pillar, recognising that investing in larger ships, forwarding services, or warehouse capacity is of limited value if cargo cannot flow through constrained nodes. The market now shows that top carriers are strategically seeking ways to invest in or integrate terminal operations into their networks.
The successful introduction of the Gemini Alliance (MSK+HLC) is already driving a measurable improvement in overall schedule reliability and reinforcing this commercial impact. When congestion occurs, carrier-aligned terminals recover first with their vessels given priority. Performance increasingly diverges between terminals that support quick network recovery and those that do not.
Although the BlackRock–GIP–TiL (MSC) consortium is unlikely to go ahead (as announced), its importance lies elsewhere. Terminals are now viewed more as enablers of capacity and reliability rather than yield assets. Having control, whether formal or informal, over terminals influences whether disruptions last days or weeks. This is evident through strategies involving minority stakes, joint ventures, and greenfield partnerships, rather than full ownership. Recent actions by Hapag-Lloyd and ONE show a deliberate approach: securing access, influencing performance, and aligning terminals with network requirements, rather than solely focusing on terminal financial returns.
Bearing for 2026: As schedule reliability expectations rise, port congestion and terminal efficiency will come sharply into focus. Expect further terminal ownership changes as control of performance, not capacity, becomes the critical advantage.
Regional ports: Building supply chain resilience via strategic diversification
The ACCC's 2024–25 stevedoring report finally addresses the structural problem: landside charges at major gateway ports have become unavoidable cost impositions, disconnected from productivity or service outcomes. Trapped by a system of infrastructure monopolies, the ACCC is finally examining ways to fix this market failure.
This market failure also makes the strategic case for regional ports compelling. Their value lies not in competing on volume with Sydney or Melbourne, but in offering what those gateways increasingly cannot: reliability, cost transparency, and operational control. Regional ports serving defined catchments can eliminate the friction costs, congestion delays, and expensive landside fees.
The sustainability case is compelling. Shorter port-to-end user distances cut Scope 3 emissions, and regional networks should identify opportunities for Australia to take a more realistic and commercially viable look at coastal shipping as part of its decarbonisation strategy.
Bearing for 2026: Regional stakeholders should carefully evaluate regional alternatives, viewing them not as secondary options but as intentional resilience strategies.
Navigating 2026: Navigating structural volatility
2025 was not just about reacting to a single shock, but about recognising that the system's structure has fundamentally changed. Volatility is now layered and persistent, influenced by trade policy, geopolitics, capacity cycles, infrastructure consolidation, regulatory scrutiny, and the expanding role of digital intelligence.
The outlook for 2026 is that advantage will not come from optimisation for one scenario, rate cycle, or gateway. Instead, it will stem from strategies capable of thriving amid both disruption and normalisation, incorporating policy and regulatory risks into daily decisions, diversifying exposure across carriers and terminals, and relying on intelligence rather than price alone.
This is no longer about weathering the storm, it’s about navigating a changing sea with purpose, discipline, and control.