WITH BRENT crude above $90 a barrel and the Strait of Hormuz under renewed threat, the Nottingham-based logistics firm says shippers are already redrawing their routing maps – and that the resulting congestion will hit delivery performance within weeks.

“Oil price headlines are about the pump. In freight, the first thing that moves is the map,” said Sarah Powell, associate director of air freight at Baxter Freight. “Shippers are not waiting to find out whether Hormuz stays open. Volume is already shifting to air and rail, and that reshuffle is what will disrupt UK supply chains over the coming weeks.”

Air capacity was constrained before the crisis, with high-value technology cargo keeping transpacific freighters close to full. A wave of sea freight converting to air is expected to tighten space further, push rates up and displace cargo that routinely travels by air.

“Space gets scarce, rates climb, and cargo that always flew gets bumped by cargo that suddenly needs to,” Powell said. “At the same time, fuel surcharges on UK and EU routes are being revised upwards and rerouted sea freight is taking on extra transit days. Together, it means the delivery promise a business made in June may not hold in September.”

The firm’s wider warning concerns the timeframe. With analysts forecasting diesel and fuel prices to remain elevated for years, Baxter Freight expects freight rates to reset rather than snap back, turning a spot-market problem into a 12 to 24 month budgeting and sourcing decision.

Powell advised operators to lock in multimodal options ahead of need, and to establish now which shipments would genuinely justify air freight if sea services become unreliable. “Those calls are cheap to make in advance and expensive to make in a panic,” she said.

“Nobody in a UK boardroom can control what happens in the Gulf. What they can control is how exposed their supply chain is to it, and right now that exposure is the difference between an inconvenience and a crisis.”