When supply chain backups share the same risk: The case for assured access

By Matthew Lekstutis 

A backup that fails for the same reason as the primary plan is not a backup. It is duplicated exposure. 

The widening Middle East conflict is exposing exactly that weakness. Alternative routes and infrastructure developed to bypass disruption in the Strait of Hormuz are now under pressure from the same regional conflict they were intended to escape. 

For leaders, the issue is no longer simply whether the business can recover. It is whether the company can secure access to what matters before everyone else reaches for the same contingency. 

As we have previously explored, the first phase of the Middle East conflict was primarily a disruption story. Energy prices rose, shipping routes changed, inventories provided a buffer, and companies found ways to work around constraints. 

But prolonged disruption changes the nature of the problem. Recent developments around Yemen and the Red Sea have put greater pressure on some of the alternative infrastructure and routes that helped absorb the initial shock.  

Many companies have alternatives on paper without having genuinely independent access in practice. 

That points to a bigger shift in how businesses think about supply chain risk. Resilience asks whether an organisation can withstand disruption and recover from it. But when critical inputs, capacity, and logistics pathways can become unavailable for prolonged periods, recovery is only part of the challenge. The more important question is whether the business can secure access to what it needs before disruption puts that access at risk. 

That is the shift from resilience to assured access.

When a critical supplier, transport route, or material source is threatened, the natural response is diversification: find another supplier; identify another route; qualify another manufacturing location.

But this can create a false sense of security. 

The disruption to energy flows in the Middle East provides a useful illustration. When movement through the Strait of Hormuz became constrained, alternative infrastructure across Saudi Arabia provided another route towards the Red Sea. As the conflict has widened, however, parts of that contingency network have themselves come under pressure.

The risk had moved but it had not disappeared.

The same principle applies across corporate supply chains. Two suppliers may rely on the same sub-tier manufacturer. Two factories may depend on the same critical feedstock. Two shipping routes may pass through the same geopolitical risk zone. An alternative source may still depend on the same energy, port, or transport infrastructure.

In each case, there is redundancy on paper but a common point of failure underneath it.

For procurement and supply chain leaders, the question therefore needs to shift from "Do we have an alternative?" to "Is that alternative genuinely independent?" 

There is another important lesson from the current disruption: a supply route does not have to close completely to become unreliable.

Ships may technically still be able to transit a region, for example, while the economics and practicalities of doing so deteriorate. Insurance premiums may rise, carriers may change schedules, lead times can become less predictable, and suppliers may become less willing to guarantee delivery.

Open is not the same as reliable. Physical availability is only one part of the equation.

For businesses, what matters is commercially usable access: can the organisation secure the capacity it needs, move the product, insure it, contract for it, and depend upon it arriving when required?

That distinction becomes increasingly important as disruption persists.

Supply shocks also develop in stages:

• Days move prices.
• Weeks disrupt routes. 
• Months consume inventory and displace assets. Longer disruption forces allocation, production cuts, and shortages.

Eventually, the issue may no longer be what an organisation has to pay, but whether it can secure supply at all. That is particularly important because the effects do not remain confined to the original commodity.

Higher energy and transport costs can flow into chemicals and industrial feedstocks. Disruption to gas and fertiliser inputs can affect food production. Petrochemical constraints can reach packaging, pharmaceuticals, and manufacturing.

As those effects spread, the most important warning signal may not be another spike in a commodity index. Instead, it may be a supplier or carrier saying: we can no longer guarantee your allocation. 

Assured access starts with identifying the breakpoints: the relatively small number of inputs, processes, capacities, and routes whose loss could stop production, revenue, or critical customer service. The next question is how much control the business needs to protect them. 

That does not mean creating expensive redundancy across the entire supply chain. Assured access is not one tactic. It means choosing the least expensive level of control that reliably protects each breakpoint. 

For some categories, a long-term agreement, allocation rights, or reserved capacity may be enough. Elsewhere, companies may need to qualify alternative suppliers, redesign products around more readily available materials, co-invest in new capacity, or take an equity stake in a critical supplier. At the furthest end of the spectrum, a business may decide that the only reliable way to secure access is to bring the bottleneck under its direct control. 

Assured access is control matched to consequence: choosing the least expensive level of control that reliably protects each breakpoint. 

Assured access is not a blank cheque for redundancy, however. Private capital rarely funds resilience as an abstract insurance policy. The intervention needs a clear economic case: protected revenue, improved margin, lower total cost, committed demand, stronger customer service, or sovereign support. 

There is also a first-mover problem. If every competitor carries the same exposure and customers will not pay for protection, the company acting first may absorb the higher cost while everyone else continues to self-insure. 

Acting early becomes an advantage when it secures something competitors cannot quickly replicate: priority allocation, qualified capacity, exclusive offtake, regulatory approval, market access, or the ability to continue serving customers while others cannot. 

The objective is therefore not maximum protection. Instead, the endgame is economically sufficient control. 

Companies are already acting across the control spectrum. 

• Microsoft used a 20-year power purchase agreement to underwrite the restart of the 835 MW Crane Clean Energy Center—securing long-duration power without owning the asset. 
• General Motors moved further up the control spectrum by committing $625 million for a 38% stake in the Thacker Pass lithium project and securing long-term rights to a significant share of its output. GM is helping create the capacity while contracting access to it. 
• Apple is helping build an alternative ecosystem. Its $500 million partnership with MP Materials supports dedicated rare-earth magnet production, recycling capacity and joint technology development in the United States. 
• At the far end of the spectrum, GE Aerospace has agreed to acquire Consolidated Precision Products for $11.75 billion, bringing mission-critical aerospace casting capacity closer under its direct control. GE has also tied the access strategy to a financial case, expecting it to expand output and be accretive to adjusted earnings and free cash flow in the first year. 

The mechanisms differ—contract it, co-invest in it, help create it, or own it—but the objective is the same: do not wait for a constrained market and then compete for whatever capacity remains. 

The appropriate response depends on the criticality of the breakpoint, the economics of protecting it, and the alternatives available. 

The objective is not wholesale localisation. For most companies, that would be neither practical nor economic. Instead, the future supply chain is likely to be more selective: global where you can, regional where you must, and local where failure is unacceptable.

The challenge is knowing where that greater control is needed. Resilience asks whether the business has a Plan B. Assured access asks whether Plan B will still be available when everyone needs it.

That is why acting before disruption matters. Securing access to the critical inputs, capacity, and routes the business depends on can prevent a contingency plan from becoming a scramble for the same scarce resources as everyone else.