Future of Global Supply Chains

Over recent decades, global supply chains have grown in scale, speed and complexity. They underpin modern commerce and are vital to the UK’s prosperity and security. In January 2024, the UK Government published its Critical Imports and Supply Chains Strategy, with the aim of helping UK  businesses build secure and resilient supply chains and safeguarding critical imports. This strategy committed to work with the Government Office for Science (GO-Science) on a new Foresight Project, alongside related actions, including building systems to cope with future supply chain shocks, and developing resilient supply chains of the future for net zero and emerging technologies. 

The Future of Global Supply Chains Foresight project will contribute to the delivery of the Critical Imports and Supply Chains Strategy by: 

• Providing a robust evidence base on the  

• Developing scenarios that consider plausible outcomes for these uncertainties and how they could interact, designed to help policy makers ‘stress test’ specific supply chains. 

• Stress testing a diverse set of case study supply chains against the scenarios to help identify vulnerabilities, opportunities, and areas the UK may wish to take action to ensure future resilience. 

• Using analysis and modelling to provide a quantitative approach to representing the scenarios and stress testing, which should provide additional evidence to support decisions. 

A Foresight report bringing together these findings is planned for publication on Gov.uk in 2025.  

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