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Over recent decades, global supply chains have grown in scale, speed, and complexity. They underpin modern commerce and are vital to the UK鈥檚 prosperity and security. Recent events, such as the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine war, have highlighted that supply chains are complex systems, with many inter-dependencies, and are vulnerable to systemic shocks.聽

What shocks and trends might global supply chains face in the future and how might they change in response?聽

The Future of Global Supply Chains in the UK is a cross-government Foresight Project which will help decision-makers across HM Government build resilient supply chains and safeguard critical imports. We are using the latest analytical and scientific evidence to identify vulnerabilities and develop avenues to long-term resilience.聽

The Future of Global Supply Chains in the UK Foresight Project will be:聽

Providing a robust evidence base on the critical long-term uncertainties facing global supply chains.聽

By engaging with our network of experts and senior officials across HM Government, we have identified a set of issues that are both uncertain in their future development and strategically important for the resilience of global supply chains out to 2040. The selected issues fall into two categories: climate and environmental factors, and geopolitical uncertainties.聽聽聽

Developing coherent scenarios that consider plausible outcomes for these uncertainties and how they could interact.聽聽聽

Taking the environmental and geopolitical uncertainties and projecting how they could play out in the future, we have developed four plausible but deliberately stretching future scenarios. Each scenario outlines different possibilities for how global trade might look in 2040.聽

Stress test a diverse set of case study supply chains against the scenarios.聽聽

The scenarios can be used by policymakers and decision-makers to explore a range of long-term outcomes, inform strategic planning, and assess the robustness of different supply chains under uncertain conditions. We will support HM Government in applying the scenarios where useful. 聽聽

Use quantitative analysis to represent the scenarios and provide further stress testing .聽

We will build models of the supply chains of selected case studies showing how they currently operate. We will then project the existing network structures to the future to show different possibilities for how global trade could evolve by 2040 under different scenarios. Finally, we will measure the resilience of these supply chains by modelling the propagation of shocks under different futures. This will help to identify where the UK might need to protect its supply chains.聽聽聽聽

The case studies we have chosen are compound semiconductors, phosphorous compounds and electric vehicle batteries. This will help identify vulnerabilities, opportunities, and areas the UK may wish to take action to ensure future resilience. We then aim to expand this approach by working with policymakers to test supply chains relevant to their priorities.

A Foresight report bringing together these findings is planned for publication on 51茶馆 in November 2025.

For more information, please email foresight@go-science.gov.uk.