Red Sea attacks cause 90 day waits for parts

FACTORIES are facing delays of up to three months for shipments of parts because of disruption in the Red Sea.

Make UK, the manufacturing trade association, said factories are now waiting as long as 90 days for materials because of disruption caused by Houthi rebel attacks.

Iran-backed militants in Yemen continue to target commercial vessels travelling through the Red Sea in protest at Israeli military action in Gaza.

The Red Sea is a key global shipping channel. About 17,000 ships, accounting for as much as 12pc of global trade, pass through the waterway every year in normal times. Large shipping companies have instead been forced to seek out alternative routes, with vessels now being rerouted around the horn of Africa. This adds thousands of miles and weeks on to the length of many journeys. Make UK said in its quarterly report: “Supply-chain challenges are increasingly becoming the focus of manufacturers’ woes as tensions in the Red Sea echo the problems logistic organisations faced during the Suez Canal blockage. Manufacturers are now reporting lead times increasing on average by two to three weeks, and even upwards of 90 days in some cases.

“The challenge is that this creates bottlenecks across the supply chain as the delay of one component of even simple products can result in increasing lead times for goods.”

Tesla was forced to suspend a large part of its production in Germany in January as it could not get enough parts.

A survey of manufacturers by S&P Global last month showed that UK producers were the worst hit in Europe by the Red Sea crisis, with more than half of factories impacted.