Impact of Covid-19 on supply chains

The impact of COVID-19 on supply chains is significant and has caused disruptions across Asia Pacific as well as globally. HSBC recently hosted a webinar with French multinational food and beverage company Danone to discuss the current state of supply chains and how companies, like Danone, are responding to the challenges. Read some of the highlights below or listen to the full webinar recording.

Impact of Covid-19 on supply chains

27 April 2020
Economist: Joseph Incalcaterra, Chief ASEAN Economist, HSBC Panel:

  • Zurab Abutidze, Regional Treasurer for Asia Pacific and Middle East, Danone
  • Winfield Wong, Managing Director, Regional Head of Business Development, GTRF [Global Trade and Receivables Finance], Asia Pacific, HSBC
  • [Moderator] Liz Bradford, Regional Head of Strategy, Commercial Banking, Asia Pacific

With COVID-19 ushering unprecedented uncertainty into the global economy, supply chains have increasingly felt the impact. Companies around the world are hastening to find ways to adapt and sustain the supply of goods and services. Joseph Incalcaterra, Chief ASEAN Economist, HSBC, at a recent webinar event for Corporate Clients offered several key insights on the situation from a macroeconomic view.

Global supply chains received an initial blow from the slowdown in Chinese manufacturing. The level of international dependence on the country’s factories is evident from the number of industries suffering a lack of critical components. Joseph pointed out that although production in China towards the end of April was at 90%, a second blow is coming from shrinking demand amongst western economies. The correlation between Asian export markets and growth in the US and EU is likely to cause adverse impact. While the recession is deep, HSBC is expecting a V-shaped recovery and a robust 2021.

Zurab Abutidze, Regional Treasurer for Asia Pacific and Middle East, Danone, and Winfield Wong, Managing Director, Regional Head of Business Development, GTRF, Asia Pacific, HSBC contributed to the panel. They shared a variety of insights around trends in supply chains and provided examples of some responsive strategies.

Danone has offered support to SME suppliers while ensuring there are alternative firms to deliver diversification. This is crucial to ensure continuity when firms like Danone are dealing with significant shifts in consumption dynamics, such as higher demand for dairy from more people eating at home and decreases in retail sales due to jumps in ecommerce.

HSBC is seeing a couple of trends that are set to continue beyond this crisis. The first being the onshoring of supply chains to increase the security of essential goods in particular. And secondly more digitisation which is widely incentivised by governments and becoming a tool for risk control.

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