The Importance Of The Hormuz Sea-Red Sea Crossing To The Global Packaging Supply Chai

 

The Ships That Cannot Move

On the morning of March 1, 2026, approximately 170 containerships sat effectively immobilized inside or at the entrance to the Strait of Hormuz, their combined capacity of roughly 450,000 TEUs representing billions of dollars in cargo - packaging components, petrochemical feedstocks, finished consumer goods, pharmaceutical packaging, and industrial materials - that had nowhere to go. Within 48 hours, three of the world's five largest container carriers made it official: MSC, CMA CGM, and Hapag-Lloyd suspended operations through the waterway indefinitely.

Under any other circumstances, the response would have been straightforward: divert. When Hormuz is under pressure, shipping reroutes through the Red Sea and the Suez Canal - the alternative east-west corridor that connects Asia to Europe via the Mediterranean. That option has been available in every previous Gulf crisis in modern shipping history. It is not available now. Since late 2023, Houthi missile and drone attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea have made Suez transits untenable for most major Western carriers, and those attacks have intensified alongside the Iran conflict in 2026.

For the first time in the history of modern container shipping, both of the world's critical east-west maritime chokepoints are simultaneously and indefinitely closed. There is no playbook for this. There is no rerouting escape. The only remaining option - diversion around the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa - adds 10 to 12 days to Asia-Europe voyages, absorbs vessel capacity that the global fleet cannot simply conjure overnight, and piles cost upon cost upon cost.

For the global packaging industry, this is not an abstract geopolitical event unfolding on the other side of the world. It is a direct, multi-layered, compounding disruption to procurement, production, and distribution at every level of the value chain. The packaging industry does not merely ship through these corridors. It depends on them for the chemical feedstocks that become plastic resins, the energy that powers glass furnaces and paper mills, the aluminum that becomes beverage cans, and the finished packaging goods that move from Asian factories to brands and consumers across Europe, the Americas, and the Middle East. The exposure runs deeper than freight rates. It runs to the molecular level of what packaging is made from.

 

Understanding The Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea are vital passageways.

Most coverage of the Strait of Hormuz focuses on a single number: 20% of the world's daily oil supply. That figure is accurate and important, but for the packaging industry, it is the less consequential of Hormuz's roles. The more important number is 22% - the share of global LNG exports that transit the strait, almost entirely from Qatar.

Natural gas is not a peripheral input to packaging manufacturing. It is foundational. Paper and pulp mills across Asia and Europe run on natural gas for process heat and energy generation. Glass furnaces require sustained high-temperature combustion - gas-fired in most modern plants. Petrochemical complexes that produce ethylene and propylene - the molecular precursors to virtually every plastic packaging resin - use natural gas liquids as a primary feedstock. When Hormuz closes and LNG supply tightens, the energy and chemical input cost of making packaging rises across every material category simultaneously.

Beyond energy, the Gulf region itself - the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Kuwait - is a primary global exporter of the petrochemical building blocks that become plastic packaging resins: ethylene, propylene, benzene, paraxylene, and the naphtha derivatives that feed resin manufacturing plants in China, South Korea, India, and Europe. These are not finished goods in transit. They are the raw chemical inputs to the factories that make PET bottles, PP containers, HDPE jugs, LDPE films, and the full range of flexible and rigid plastic packaging that the global consumer economy depends on. Disruption to their export does not slow packaging manufacturing - it stops it.

A Hormuz closure therefore hits the packaging industry at three distinct levels simultaneously. First, it disrupts energy supply, raising the cost of every energy-intensive manufacturing process. Second, it disrupts chemical feedstock supply, tightening the availability of the building blocks that become plastic resins and driving up their cost. Third, it disrupts finished goods transit, preventing packaged products and packaging components already manufactured from reaching their destinations.

The Red Sea and Suez corridor was supposed to be the safety valve for each of these pressures. It is not. Since the Houthi campaign began in late 2023, carriers have been avoiding the corridor in waves, with each escalation in Middle East conflict forcing more vessels to divert to the Cape. The 2024 Red Sea crisis demonstrated that a single-chokepoint disruption could triple container freight rates to Europe from Asia. That crisis involved one blocked corridor while the other remained open. What the packaging industry is now navigating is a closed system - both exits sealed simultaneously.

 

The Packaging Industry's Unique Exposure Profile

Energy markets absorb most of the mainstream media attention when Hormuz is discussed, and reasonably so - the crude oil implications are immediate and visible in fuel prices worldwide. But the packaging industry carries a depth of exposure that energy analysis alone does not capture, and it is worth being explicit about why.

The first layer of exposure is feedstock origin. The Gulf is not merely an energy supplier to the packaging industry; it is a primary source of the chemical feedstocks that become packaging materials themselves. The UAE and Saudi Arabia supply ethylene and propylene to resin manufacturers across Asia and Europe. Disruption to these exports tightens resin supply as a function of chemistry and logistics, independent of what oil prices do. Even if crude oil prices were somehow insulated from the conflict - which they are not - the petrochemical supply disruption would still be real and significant.

The second layer is manufacturing geography. The majority of the world's rigid plastic packaging, flexible packaging films, packaging machinery, and packaging components is manufactured in China, South Korea, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia. These factories depend on Gulf feedstocks for their raw material inputs and export their finished products through both disrupted corridors. The Asian packaging manufacturing complex is caught in a pincer: input supply is disrupted from the west, and output transit is disrupted from both directions.

The third layer is transit dependency across multiple product categories. This is not limited to plastic packaging. Corrugated boxes, aluminum cans, glass jars, paperboard cartons, flexible pouches, caps and closures, labels, and the machinery used to fill and seal all of these formats - the entire physical infrastructure of packaging - moves heavily through both the Hormuz corridor (for Gulf-regional distribution) and the Suez corridor (for Asia-Europe distribution).

The fourth layer is energy intensity. Packaging manufacturing is among the more energy-intensive sectors in global industry. Glass production requires sustained furnace temperatures above 1,500°C. Aluminum smelting is one of the most electricity-intensive industrial processes that exists. Paper and pulp processing requires large volumes of process heat. Plastic extrusion, injection molding, and thermoforming all require energy. Every one of these processes becomes more expensive when LNG prices spike and oil prices climb toward $120–150 per barrel.

The fifth layer - and the one most frequently overlooked - is hub dependency. Dubai's Jebel Ali port is the largest container transshipment hub in the Middle East and a critical distribution node for packaging goods moving to MENA, East Africa, and South Asia. It is not merely a waypoint. For hundreds of packaging manufacturers and brands serving these markets, Jebel Ali is the destination. Its temporary shutdown following conflict damage is not a rerouting problem - it is a market access problem. The goods arrive nowhere. The MENA market, which represents billions of dollars in annual packaging consumption, has been effectively cut off from its primary supply infrastructure simultaneously on the import and transit side.

 

Resin and Feedstock Price Pressure

Crude oil at $120 to $150 per barrel - the consensus analyst range for a sustained Hormuz closure - translates into a naphtha price increase of approximately $150 to $200 per metric ton. This flows directly into ethylene and propylene pricing, and from there into PET, PP, HDPE, and LDPE resin prices. The transmission from crude oil to packaging resin is not immediate - it moves through the petrochemical value chain over weeks - but it is reliable and well-documented from previous oil price spike episodes.

The interaction with sustainable packaging procurement makes this particularly painful. Packaging brands that were already managing rPET at a €550 to €750 per metric ton premium over virgin PET in Europe will find that a simultaneous increase in virgin PET resin cost does not close the rPET-to-virgin gap and make recycled content look more affordable. It raises both floors at the same time, eliminating material substitution as a cost-reduction lever precisely when procurement teams need it most.

Paper and paperboard packaging faces analogous pressure through LNG pricing. A 30% increase in natural gas costs - a realistic scenario under a sustained Hormuz closure given Qatar's dominant role as an LNG exporter - raises energy costs at gas-fired pulp and paper mills, pushing production costs upward across corrugated, cartonboard, and food-grade paper packaging categories.

 

Inventory Carrying Costs

The 10 to 12 day transit extension imposed by Cape of Good Hope diversion has a second-order financial effect that often gets overlooked in freight cost discussions: it requires proportionally more capital committed to in-transit and buffer inventory.

A packaging buyer maintaining 30 days of safety stock calibrated to a 28-day Asia-Europe transit time needs approximately 40% more inventory in the pipeline when transit times extend to 40 days. In an environment of elevated interest rates, holding that additional inventory is not free. For high-volume packaging operations, the working capital impact of extended transit times can rival the direct freight cost increase in total financial impact.

Companies operating lean procurement models - just-in-time restocking, minimal safety stock, high inventory turns - are the most acutely exposed. Systems calibrated for a world where Suez was open and Hormuz was navigable were not designed for a world where neither is.

 

 

Impact by Packaging Category

The dual chokepoint crisis does not affect all packaging categories equally. The convergence of feedstock disruption, energy cost escalation, freight rate increases, and war-risk insurance repricing creates a distinct exposure profile for each material type. For procurement teams managing multiple packaging formats, understanding which categories face the most severe and immediate pressure - and why - is the essential first step in any crisis triage process. What follows is a category-by-category analysis of the four most acutely impacted formats.

Rigid Plastic Packaging

PET bottles, PP containers, HDPE jugs, and rigid plastic trays face the highest combined exposure of any packaging category in the current crisis - and the reason is structural, not incidental. Their vulnerability is not concentrated in one part of the supply chain; it is distributed across every stage simultaneously.

The first pressure point is feedstock origin. Virgin PET, PP, and HDPE are all produced from petrochemical building blocks - primarily ethylene and propylene - that are derived from naphtha or natural gas liquids. The Gulf region, and specifically the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, is one of the world's primary exporters of these chemical precursors, supplying resin manufacturing plants across Asia and Europe. When Hormuz closes, it does not merely delay shipments of finished goods - it disrupts the molecular input chain of plastic packaging production. Resin plants downstream from Gulf feedstock suppliers face the choice of drawing on reserves, sourcing from more expensive alternative suppliers, or reducing output. All three options translate into higher resin costs for packaging buyers, and the price signal travels quickly.

The second pressure point is manufacturing geography. The overwhelming majority of the world's rigid plastic packaging production - PET preforms, PP injection-molded containers, HDPE blow-molded bottles - is concentrated in China, South Korea, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia. These facilities are simultaneously input-constrained (Gulf feedstocks are disrupted) and output-constrained (both export corridors are closed or prohibitively expensive). Asian rigid plastic packaging manufacturers are caught in a structural pincer from which there is no short-term operational escape.

The third and perhaps most painful pressure point is the interaction with sustainable packaging procurement. Brands that were already managing rPET at a €550 to €750 per metric ton premium over virgin PET in Europe will find that a simultaneous spike in virgin PET resin costs - the direct consequence of crude oil approaching $120 to $150 per barrel under a sustained Hormuz closure - does not narrow the recycled-to-virgin cost gap and offer procurement relief. It raises both floors at the same time. The rPET premium remains. Virgin resin becomes more expensive. Every cost lever that brands might reach for is pulled in the same direction simultaneously, eliminating the material substitution strategies that might otherwise partially offset the impact.

The freight and insurance dimension compounds all of this further. CMA CGM's $3,000 per FEU emergency conflict surcharge, combined with Cape of Good Hope diversion costs of $200 to $400 per TEU, and war-risk insurance premiums that have historically jumped from $20,000 to $500,000 per voyage during Gulf crises, make the total landed cost of an Asian-manufactured PET bottle or PP container arriving in Europe or North America materially higher than any budget cycle projected.

The most exposed end markets are beverage packaging - where PET bottles are the dominant format and switching to glass or aluminum at scale is not feasible in a short crisis window - personal care and household chemicals, and food containers. For procurement teams managing these categories, the realistic immediate options are limited to negotiating spot resin from non-Gulf sources, drawing down safety stock while qualifying alternative suppliers, and communicating realistic lead time and cost revisions to brand and finance stakeholders as early as possible.

Corrugated and Paperboard Packaging

Paper-based packaging enters the dual chokepoint crisis from a structurally more resilient position than plastic - but that relative resilience should not be confused with immunity. The exposure is real, it is multi-channel, and it is compounding in ways that e-commerce and food brands dependent on corrugated supply chains need to understand clearly.

The most significant structural advantage paper packaging holds over plastic is manufacturing geography. Substantial corrugated and cartonboard production capacity exists in North America and Europe - regions that are geographically insulated from the worst of the direct transit disruption. For brands that already have qualified supplier relationships with domestic or near-regional corrugated manufacturers, the dual chokepoint crisis creates a cost increase but not necessarily a supply availability crisis. The ability to source domestically is the single most important variable separating well-prepared paper packaging buyers from exposed ones.

The primary risk channel for paper and corrugated packaging is energy cost, and this is where the 22% of global LNG supply transiting Hormuz becomes directly relevant. Pulp and paper mills are among the most energy-intensive manufacturing facilities in the packaging sector. The kraft pulping process requires sustained high-temperature steam generation. Paper drying, coating, and finishing lines run on significant thermal and electrical energy. In regions where natural gas is the primary energy source for these operations - which includes most of Asia and large portions of Europe - a sustained LNG supply disruption and price spike flowing from the Hormuz closure raises mill operating costs meaningfully.

The financial transmission from LNG prices to corrugated box prices is not immediate - there is a lag of weeks to months as mills work through existing energy contracts and hedging positions - but it is reliable and directionally certain. Mill managers who purchased energy forward have a window of protection; those on spot or short-term contracts are already recalculating their cost structures. Those increases will flow through to buyers in the form of price adjustments on corrugated and cartonboard contracts, with the timing depending on the structure of individual supply agreements.

For e-commerce brands, the corrugated packaging exposure has an additional dimension: Asian sourcing concentration. Many high-volume e-commerce operations source corrugated packaging - particularly specialty formats, printed boxes, and custom packaging components - from Chinese manufacturers where unit economics are favorable at scale. These supply chains are directly exposed to the Cape of Good Hope transit extension, adding 10 to 12 days to lead times and freight costs that erode the unit economics that made Asian sourcing attractive in the first place. At the scale of millions of units per month, a $400 per TEU freight increase is not trivial even for relatively low-value corrugated packaging.

The strategic implication for corrugated buyers is clear: those with existing domestic or near-regional supplier relationships are managing a cost increase. Those with heavily Asia-concentrated corrugated supply chains are managing both a cost increase and a supply reliability risk - and the window for establishing alternative qualified supplier relationships without a production line gap is narrowing with each passing week.

Glass Packaging

Glass packaging occupies a distinctive position in the crisis exposure landscape. Unlike plastic and aluminum - which face simultaneous disruption to both material inputs and finished goods transit - glass faces a more concentrated exposure profile centered primarily on energy costs. Understanding this distinction is critical for procurement teams making material strategy decisions under crisis conditions.

Glass manufacturing is fundamentally an energy-intensive transformation process. Silica sand, soda ash, limestone, and cullet (recycled glass) are melted together in furnaces operating at temperatures above 1,500°C, held at those temperatures for the duration of the melting and refining cycle, and then formed, annealed, and cooled in a continuous process that cannot be interrupted without significant equipment risk. The energy required to sustain these operations is enormous, and in most modern glass plants, natural gas is the primary fuel source for furnace firing and the annealing lehr. This makes glass manufacturing directly and acutely sensitive to natural gas price increases - and natural gas prices are directly linked to the LNG supply disruption flowing from the Hormuz closure.

The mathematics are straightforward: natural gas typically represents 15 to 25% of the total production cost of a glass container. A 30% increase in natural gas costs - a realistic scenario if Qatar's LNG exports are disrupted for a sustained period - translates into a 4 to 7% increase in glass container production cost before any other cost factors are considered. For premium glass packaging categories - spirits bottles, cosmetics glass, high-end food packaging - where margins can absorb a modest cost increase, this may be manageable. For commodity glass formats competing on price with plastic alternatives, a 5 to 7% production cost increase is a significant competitive pressure.

The regional dimension of glass exposure is important to map correctly. European and North American glass manufacturers source their raw materials domestically or regionally, manufacture locally, and distribute within regional markets - meaning their finished goods transit exposure to the dual chokepoint is minimal. Their energy exposure, however, is real, because European gas markets are directly affected by LNG supply tightening given Europe's significant dependence on LNG imports to supplement pipeline gas supply.

The more severe and direct disruption falls on Gulf-region glass manufacturers - a significant production cluster, particularly in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt - that serve the MENA market. These manufacturers face dual disruption: their energy supply (Gulf natural gas) is disrupted by the conflict, and their finished goods distribution (through Gulf ports including Jebel Ali) is simultaneously impaired. For MENA market glass packaging supply, this is not a cost increase; it is a supply availability.

For brands in premium food, spirits, cosmetics, and pharmaceutical glass packaging, the strategic implication is nuanced. The argument for glass as a more sustainable and consumer-preferred alternative to plastic has not changed. But the assumption that glass is a cost-stable, supply-reliable alternative to plastic during the current crisis needs to be qualified. Energy cost increases are coming. MENA-serving brands face supply disruption. And brands reconsidering glass versus rPET specifically as a sustainability trade-off must now account for the fact that both options are simultaneously under cost pressure from different directions - rPET from feedstock and recycled content premium dynamics, glass from energy.

Pharmaceutical Packaging

Pharmaceutical packaging carries the most severe systemic risk profile of any packaging category in the dual chokepoint crisis - and the reason is not merely a function of supply chain exposure. It is a function of the intersection between supply chain vulnerability and regulatory immovability that makes rapid adaptation essentially impossible.

The supply chain concentration problem is severe. Primary pharmaceutical packaging - the materials in direct contact with the drug product, including glass vials, ampoules, blister foils, PVC/PVDC blister films, prefillable syringes, IV bags, and sterile pouches - is manufactured predominantly in Asia, with significant production concentration in China, India, and South Korea. These facilities export their products through the same disrupted corridors that affect every other Asian packaging category. The transit exposure is identical to rigid plastic or flexible packaging in terms of freight cost increases and lead time extensions.

What makes pharmaceutical packaging categorically different from every other category is the regulatory constraint on supplier switching. For primary packaging - the materials that contact the drug product directly - a change of supplier requires a regulatory submission to the FDA, EMA, or relevant national authority, stability testing to demonstrate that the new packaging material does not interact with the drug product or affect its shelf life, and in many cases a new or amended marketing authorization. This process routinely takes 12 to 24 months for established drug products. It cannot be compressed into a 30 to 90 day crisis response window. A pharmaceutical brand cannot simply qualify a new European vial manufacturer to replace a disrupted Chinese supplier before the next production run. The regulatory timeline makes that option structurally unavailable.

The secondary packaging dimension - cartons, labels, serialization components, outer packaging materials - is somewhat more flexible, with supplier switching easier and regulatory requirements less stringent. But secondary packaging disruption still creates production line stoppages if materials are not available when needed, regardless of whether regulatory constraints apply. A pharmaceutical filling line cannot run without labeled cartons, even if the regulatory approval exists to switch carton suppliers in principle.

The MENA market exposure adds another layer of severity. The Middle East is a major market for pharmaceutical products, including temperature-sensitive biologics and specialty medicines that depend on cold chain integrity and uninterrupted supply. The Jebel Ali hub disruption - which served as the primary distribution node for pharmaceutical goods moving into the Gulf states, East Africa, and parts of South Asia - creates a market access gap that cannot be bridged by rerouting to the Cape of Good Hope. The Cape adds time and cost; it does not restore a disrupted destination port.

The cold chain dimension compounds the problem further. Many pharmaceutical packaging supply chains - particularly for biologics, vaccines, and temperature-sensitive specialty drugs - include temperature-controlled packaging components (insulated shippers, phase-change materials, validated cold chain packaging systems) that are themselves subject to transit time constraints. A cold chain packaging system validated for 96-hour performance does not become a 10-day system because the transit route changed. Extended Cape of Good Hope diversions may simply be incompatible with the performance specifications of certain pharmaceutical cold chain packaging formats.

For pharmaceutical procurement and supply chain teams, the crisis response toolkit is more constrained than in any other category. Drawing down safety stock is the primary immediate lever - and the adequacy of current safety stock levels, calibrated to pre-crisis transit times, is almost certainly insufficient. Regulatory authorities in several jurisdictions have emergency provisions for supply disruptions that may allow expedited review of supplier changes for critical medicines; engaging regulatory affairs teams to assess these options should be an immediate priority. And for procurement teams with any upcoming contract renewals for primary packaging components, building buffer inventory commitments and dual-sourcing requirements into new contracts - while they still can - is the most important strategic action available in the current window.

 

Why This Crisis Is Categorically Different

Dimension	2021 Suez Canal Crisis	2024 Red Sea / Houthi Crisis	2026 Dual Chokepoint Crisis
Onset Date	March 23, 2021	Ongoing since November 2023	February 28, 2026
Duration	6 days	14+ months (not fully resolved)	Unknown (still ongoing)
Root Cause	Sandstorm grounded container ship Ever Given	Houthi militia attacked commercial vessels	U.S.–Israel military strikes on Iran → Iran closes Strait of Hormuz
Blocked Waterway(s)	Suez Canal (single point)	Red Sea + Gulf of Aden + Suez Canal	Strait of Hormuz + Red Sea (simultaneously)
Vessels Affected	~370 ships stranded	Weekly transits down ~67%	450,000 TEU trapped; 200+ vessels stranded in the Persian Gulf
Trade / Economic Loss	~$400M/hour; ~$9.6B/day	Suez Canal revenue down 60%	Systemic shock to global energy & trade - losses incalculable

 

The 2021 Ever Given Suez blockage lasted six days. One chokepoint, fully resolved within a week. The Red Sea was open. Hormuz was open. Global supply chains absorbed approximately $9.6 billion per day in delayed trade and recovered within weeks. It was disruptive; it was not structural.

The 2024 Red Sea/Houthi crisis was a more serious single-chokepoint disruption - ongoing, not a one-time blockage. But critically, Hormuz remained open throughout. Carriers diverted Gulf origin shipments via Cape of Good Hope, and Asia-to-Europe transit via Suez was impaired, but Gulf-to-Asia and Gulf-to-Europe supply chains could still function through Hormuz. Freight rates tripled to Europe from Asia, but markets adapted. The Saudi and UAE petrochemical export corridors remained open.

The 2026 dual chokepoint is categorically different from both precedents. When Suez is disrupted, ships divert via Cape. When Hormuz is disrupted, ships exit via the Red Sea to Suez - or they do not exit at all. When both are simultaneously disrupted, there is no rerouting logic that resolves the problem. The Cape of Good Hope diversion handles Asia-to-Europe transit (at significant cost and time penalty), but it does not restore Gulf port access for vessels that need to load or discharge at Gulf terminals. It does not restore Jebel Ali. It does not restore the petrochemical export pipelines from the UAE and Saudi Arabia.

The mathematical constraint is also significant. The global container fleet does not have sufficient Cape of Good Hope route capacity to absorb the full volume that previously moved through both Suez and Hormuz simultaneously. Vessels are physical assets that cannot be repositioned instantly. As more carriers divert to the Cape, the route becomes congested, transit times extend further, and rates climb higher in a self-reinforcing spiral. Some cargo will simply wait - at origin ports, at the entrance to the strait, or at intermediate transshipment hubs - until capacity becomes available or the crisis resolves. For packaging supply chains, cargo waiting is production lines stopping.

 

The End of the Single-Chokepoint Playbook

For thirty years, the global packaging industry - and global trade more broadly - operated on an implicit architectural assumption: that the major maritime corridors were effectively redundant. If one route was disrupted, another was available. The Suez Canal and the Strait of Hormuz served as mutual backstops. A crisis in one part of the world did not permanently sever the connections that held global supply chains together. It temporarily stressed them.

That assumption is no longer operationally valid. The dual chokepoint crisis of 2026 is not a black swan event that no one could have anticipated. It is the convergence of geopolitical trends - the Iran conflict, Houthi activity in the Red Sea, the strategic importance of the Gulf petrochemical complex - that have been building and compounding for years. Supply chain strategists who were paying attention flagged these as compounding risks. The packaging industry, by and large, was not structured to absorb their simultaneous realization.

The packaging industry's response to this crisis will define the architecture of its supply chains for the next decade. Companies that treat the dual chokepoint as a freight cost problem to be managed by paying higher shipping rates and waiting for diplomatic resolution will find themselves in the same position - or worse - the next time geopolitical risk closes a corridor. Companies that use this crisis as the forcing function for genuine supply chain redesign - regional manufacturing diversification, dual-sourcing mandates for critical materials, material flexibility across the product portfolio, robust contingency inventory protocols, and geopolitically aware procurement contract structures - will emerge from this period structurally stronger than their competitors.

The disruption is real, the costs are significant, and the timeline to resolution is uncertain. What is not uncertain is the direction of structural change that this crisis demands. The global packaging supply chain was built for a world where Suez and Hormuz were both open. That world existed until very recently. The industry that thrives in the world that has replaced it will be the one that stops assuming the routes will reopen and starts building supply chains that do not depend on them to function.