If you work in UK manufacturing and have been watching the news over the last few months, you will already know that the situation in the Middle East has taken a turn that nobody in global trade wanted to see.
Since late February 2026, the Strait of Hormuz has been effectively closed to commercial shipping following US and Israeli military action against Iran. Every major carrier suspended transits. Tankers anchored outside the strait rather than risk attack. At the same time, the Red Sea route to Europe, which was already operating well below pre-crisis capacity, has been blocked again by resumed Houthi attacks.
For the first time in living memory, both of the Middle East’s major maritime corridors are simultaneously closed. That is not a supply chain inconvenience. It is a structural shock.
It is not just about oil
It would be easy to frame this purely as an energy story. Oil prices have jumped sharply and higher energy, fertilizer and transport costs are feeding into cost-of-living pressures across the board. But the impact on manufacturing goes much wider than what comes out of a refinery.
Around a third of global seaborne methanol trade passes through the Strait of Hormuz, disrupting the supply of a key chemical feedstock for resins, coatings and plastics. Monoethylene glycol, a key input for polyester fibres, packaging and textiles, flows in huge volumes from the Gulf. High-grade iron ore pellets and direct-reduced iron, premium feedstocks for global steelmaking, face the same squeeze.
Aluminium alloys produced in Bahrain and the UAE are rolled into car body panels, aircraft fuselage sheets and beverage cans. Gulf steelmakers export the prefabricated beams and girders that form the skeleton of bridges and buildings across multiple continents.
Insurance costs for vessels attempting to operate in the region have rocketed, and that cost is flowing directly into supply chains.
In short, if your business uses plastics, metals, chemicals, packaging or anything that relies on components sourced from or routed through the Gulf, you are likely already feeling this. And if you are not feeling it yet, the pressure is coming.
The honest reality for manufacturers
Replenishment cycles for businesses reliant on Gulf-dependent supply chains have extended significantly. Lead times are stretching. Input costs are rising. Geopolitical instability has prompted many organisations to consider onshoring or nearshoring
manufacturing operations, which requires new supplier relationships and redesigned networks. None of that happens quickly or cheaply.
And the difficult truth is that nobody can tell you with confidence when this resolves. Analysts have modelled scenarios ranging from weeks to years. Sensible supply chain planning right now should assume the disruption persists for at least three to six months, and treat any earlier resolution as a positive surprise rather than the baseline.
That is a hard thing to plan around. But planning around uncertainty is precisely what manufacturers now need to get better at.
Where AI comes in
We want to be straight with you here. AI will not reopen the Strait of Hormuz. It will not magic away raw material shortages or bring insurance premiums back down. It can sharpen your view. It cannot remove supplier concentration risk, port constraints, qualification timelines, or the complexity of running a multi-site, multi-tier supply chain.
What it can do is give you something you badly need right now: a much clearer picture of where your vulnerabilities actually are, and more time to do something about them.
AI-powered tools can integrate procurement, manufacturing and logistics data, enabling companies to anticipate disruptions rather than simply react to them. Digital twins and scenario modelling are becoming operational tools rather than experiments, used to simulate what-if situations, optimise safety stock levels, and identify single-source risks across global supply networks.
Think about what that means practically. Instead of finding out you have a critical input shortage when a production line stops, you start modelling it three months out. Instead of calling suppliers one by one to understand your exposure, you have a consolidated view across your entire bill of materials. Instead of gut instinct on where to build stock buffers, you have data-backed recommendations.
That said, the practical application of AI within supply chains follows a measured and strategic path. The manufacturers getting the most value from it right now are not the ones who jumped straight to a technology platform. They are the ones who took a clear-eyed look at the state of their data first. Having standard processes and clean data is foundational.
What good looks like
The real value of AI is in helping manufacturers understand how their networks respond in unstable conditions. The more complex the supply chain, and the more it is exposed to geopolitical, environmental and economic pressures, the more that clarity matters.
For a UK manufacturer dealing with the current disruption, that might look like:
Using AI to map your full supplier network and flag which inputs have Gulf or Red Sea exposure. Running scenario models that show what happens to your production schedule if lead times extend by four, eight or twelve weeks. Identifying where you have genuine alternative suppliers and where you are, in reality, single-source dependent. Giving your procurement and operations teams a shared, real-time view instead of spreadsheets updated every Friday afternoon.
None of this requires a year-long transformation programme. Much of it can start with work you do on your own data, in your own business, in the coming weeks.
A final thought
The Strait of Hormuz crisis is a reminder that global supply chains carry a fragility that rarely shows up on a risk register until something goes wrong. The Red Sea disruption of 2023 and 2024 was a warning shot. This is a louder one.
Organisations are finding it harder to manage disruptions like trade uncertainty and geopolitical conflicts without better technology, particularly real-time visibility and smarter risk analysis. That is not a technology sales pitch. It is simply the direction that manufacturing operations are moving in, and the current situation is accelerating that shift considerably.
If you are a manufacturer trying to get your head around what your real exposure looks like right now, we are happy to have a straight conversation about it. No jargon, no pressure. Just a genuine look at where AI could help you see more clearly.
