This Week on Supply Chain Now: August 8th – 14th

An estimated 12% of global trade worth more than $1 trillion traverses the Red Sea each year. When Houthi rebels started attacking commercial vessels in November 2023, ocean carriers began rerouting container ships around Africa’s Cape of Good Horn rather than through the Suez Canal on voyages from Asia to Europe. That greatly increased travel time and costs. As of March of this year, shipping through the Red Sea was still down 70% from before the attacks began, according to The Economist, with many ocean carriers still avoiding the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, which separates the Red Sea from the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Peninsula. Maritime Industry Caught in the Crosshairs Houthi rebels launched attacks on ships in the Red Sea in response to Israel’s military operations in Gaza. The Houthis attacked more than 100 cargo ships between November 2023 and January 2025. The attacks, with missiles and drones, sunk two vessels and killed four sailors. In late October 2024, a headline in gCaptain read, “Red Sea Is Now So Dangerous Even NATO Warships Are Avoiding It.” “The United States Navy continues to send warships through the Red Sea, but its mission to protect merchant ships – Operation Prosperity…

Back in the day, business news and ideas often flowed from office watercooler conversations. Then company figureheads started popping up on cable TV news programs, lecturing on stock market drops, trade increases, industry gains, and, during the COVID-19 pandemic, supply chain shortfalls. Now, podcasts are all the rage, and it can be difficult to stand out in a crowded field. There’s a lot of noise in supply chain podcasts, in particular. How do you break through to share your supply chain insights with potentially millions of listeners? Supply Chain Podcasts: Meeting Industry Leaders Where They Are It’s said that public radio host Christopher Lydon used an audio RSS feed developed by software engineer Dave Winer to provide audio content of interviews on his blog in 2003. A year later, iPodder was created to enable users to download audio content to their iPods, and the word podcast was born. This year, the number of podcast listeners is forecast to reach a whopping 254.3 million. Podcasts have become the place for industry leaders to find an eager audience. Breaking Through: 3 Ways Supply Chain Podcasts Cut Through the Noise Today, there are thousands of podcasts that are touted as supply chain-focused. In…