Supplier concentration on South Island freight routes
Why food and manufacturing firms should treat a single packaging or ingredient supplier as an operational risk, not only a purchasing detail.
When a single packaging plant or ingredient broker sits behind most of your SKUs, a washed-out road or industrial stoppage becomes your disruption — even if your own floor is dry.
Map suppliers by what stops if they miss two deliveries, not by annual spend alone. A low-cost carton supplier that serves every SKU can outrank a expensive specialised ingredient used on one line. For each concentrated supplier, write a temporary workaround: substitute pack, reduced range, or a second broker already onboarded with account details.
Include the workaround in your continuity pack with a named owner and a trigger (“if delivery slips more than 48 hours”). Purchasing teams often know these options orally; continuity documents need them on paper so night supervisors are not inventing answers at 2 a.m.