#supply-chain

#supply-chain

In April, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum announced the country's aerospace industry could see sustained annual growth of as much as 15 percent over the next four years, and attributed the sector's expansion to a robust local manufacturing workforce, increasing exports, and a strong presence of foreign companies. Mexico is striving to become one of the top 10 countries in aerospace production value, a goal outlined in Plan Mexico, the country's strategic initiative to enhance global competitiveness in key sectors.

High-power magnets undergird an enormous amount of modern society. From high-end audio speakers to electric vehicles, wind turbines, and fighter jets, they are a vital component in much of the technology we touch every day. To make them requires mining and refining rare earth elements -a supply chain largely controlled by China. Companies around the world are racing to find alternatives by using materials that are more abundant and cheaper to produce domestically. Minneapolis-based Niron Magnetics believes it has found a solution, claiming it can approach key aspects of rare earth magnet performance, using humble iron and nitrogen-albeit in an exotic formulation.

The mall staple was able to get ahead of tariff impacts during the first half of the year through preemptive actions, Chief Financial Officer Voin Todorovic said in a statement Thursday, but the levies caught up to the company in its most recent quarter and will continue to weigh on its performance into 2026. "We expect this elevated level of impact to continue through the fourth quarter and into the next fiscal year," Todorovic said.

When the British designer Fred Rigby released his first furniture collection in 2021, he knew from the outset he would prioritize a U.S. audience-a bigger market with more sales opportunities, he says. Rigby designs and manufactures elegantly crafted furniture in the Oxfordshire countryside, and has built strong relationships with interior designer clients in cities like New York, L.A. and Miami.

In DRC's perilous mines, Eagle Mujinga walks a tightrope, protecting workers' welfare to supply international demand for cobalt. Eagle Mujinga manages workers at Shabara cobalt mine in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). As the world's biggest producer of cobalt, the DRC is a part of the chain that fuels electric vehicles and renewable energy worldwide. Miners in the DRC face dangerous working conditions and earn, on average, a few dollars per day to supply the multibillion-dollar industry.

Between the COVID-19 pandemic and all the subsequent supply-chain headaches that caused prices to skyrocket, followed by tariffs on foreign goods nowadays, people are starting to really wonder when they're going to catch a financial break. What's worse is that even saving money at Costco - a haven to which many families have flocked for years in search of cheap, good-quality food - has become challenging as of late.

Dell Technologies Inc., HP Inc. and other tech companies are warning of potential memory-chip supply shortages in the coming year due to soaring demand from the buildout of artificial intelligence infrastructure. Consumer electronics makers including Xiaomi Corp. have sounded the alarm about potential price increases, while others including Lenovo Group Ltd. have begun stockpiling memory chips in anticipation of rising costs. Counterpoint Research this month forecast a 50% price rise for memory modules through the second quarter of next year.

The price of some cloud services will have to rise by five to ten percent by mid-2026, maybe sooner, according to Octave Klaba, CEO of French cloud OVH. In a weekend post to his X account, Klaba opened with the observation that the price of RAM and NVMe drives will increase significantly in around six months. The CEO attributed that increase to demand for AI hardware, which he said has seen memory-makers shift production to the HBM memory used in GPUs.

"When I said, 'I'm disappointed that it isn't going to follow a console pricing model where it's subsidized by the fact that the manufacturer is going to be taking 30% of every game sold on it over the lifespan of this thing, because I feel that would be a more meaningful product,' they kind of asked what I meant by, well, 'What do you mean by console price?' And I said, 'Well, $500,'" he said, as reported by IGN.

Luminar faces potential bankruptcy as Volvo backs off its promise to make lidar standard in its flagship models. Volvo blamed "limited supply of the lidar hardware." Luminar has already warned investors that it may run out of cash by the end of Q1 2026. Not long ago, Volvo and Luminar seemed like the perfect partnership. The Swedish automaker pushed a safety-first approach that used the startup's laser-based sensors to ensure its vehicles were safer than ever.

Keychain connects over 20,000 brands and retailers with 30,000 vetted manufacturers through AI-powered matching technology that eliminates these bottlenecks, turning product ideas into structured, searchable data that accelerates sourcing from months to days. The platform launched KeychainOS for manufacturers in February 2024, then immediately faced demand from retailers who needed the same end-to-end visibility for their private label programs- a signal that drove the company to develop Keychain360, a supply chain management platform designed specifically for retail private label operations.

Reactive personalization is being replaced by predictive intent engines. Instead of waiting for a customer to browse, AI anticipates the customer's next wants based on contextual data like weather, life events, and even local cultural moments. For example, as outdoor searches tick upward in specific regions, retailers surface camping gear. The upside is deeper relevance. As with every trend, there are risks. Here, if the timing is too perfect, the relevance can feel intrusive to the customer.

Enthusiasm for corporate sustainability appears to be waning, with major firms seemingly quietly abandoning environmental goals, but David Picton remains optimistic. For him, sustainability is not an ethical question, but a business driver. A self-described "demon for cutting down on food waste" at home, Picton is senior vice-president of environment, social and governance (ESG) and sustainability at EcoOnline, a company that develops software tools to help organisations protect workers, meet environmental regulations, and embed sustainable practices.

Norfolk, Virginia based Mutant Inc. are stepping up their game to fill the new supply chain void created by tariffs. With departing Chinese suppliers no longer able to compete due to the reciprocal tariffs, Mutant Inc. is taking over supplying batteries and other energy solutions for clients old and new, which may include such entities as Stanley Black & Decker (NYSE: SWK), international telecom companies, major utilities, and others.

"I am honored to be leading I9 and our family of companies into the next chapter of business," says Dustin Adams, "Our deep history in North American Manufacturing has established roots that position us better than anyone else in the industry today. With the recent acquisition of We Are One, Industry Nine will be the only brand to have full control and ownership of its wheel business in the USA."

China will exempt some Nexperia chips from an export ban that was imposed amid an escalating row with the Dutch government, officials said on Saturday. "We will comprehensively consider the actual situation of enterprises and grant exemptions to exports that meet the criteria," the Chinese Commerce Ministry said in a statement. Nexperia produces components in Europe before sending them to China for finishing and then re-exporting them back to customers in Europe. The Netherlands-based company is owned by China's Wingtech Technology.

During America's hardest economic times, canned goods were a lifeline. From 1929, the start of the Great Depression, to 1941, when the United States entered World War II, people ate nearly 50 percent more canned fruit, by weight, compared with the preceding 13 years. Some used new community canning centers to safely preserve food for the long term, or depended on the U.S. government's first food-stamp programs to buy "surplus goods," including canned beef, mutton, goat, and peas.

If you're wondering why your favorite fresh berries are so much more expensive than other options like apples and bananas, it's probably because you are thinking about fruit as plants, not commodities. Like it or not, our modern food infrastructure is full of complex structures to get oranges from California, tropical fruit, and potatoes from Idaho onto the same store shelves. And being a commodity means every little bump in that road ends with a little bump in price that you see at the grocery store.

It happens to avid fast food fans everywhere: You're scrolling through Instagram or TikTok and see a mouthwatering burger, sandwich, or dessert that looks too good to be real - only to find out it's not sold anywhere near you. A consistent menu or locations that you can find almost anywhere are some of fast food's main appeals. Regardless of whether a chain is regional or national, some of the most-loved food items on menus are tied to specific regions.

Apple's iPhone Air was the company's most interesting new iPhone this year, at least insofar as it was the one most different from previous iPhones. A note from analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, whose supply chain sources are often accurate about Apple's future plans, said yesterday that demand for the iPhone Air "has fallen short of expectations" and that "both shipments and production capacity" were being scaled back to account for the lower-than-expected demand.

The components found in downed Russian drones and cruise and ballistic missiles range from microcomputers and sensors to switching connectors and converters. Ukraine says they're coming from the US, UK, Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands, South Korea, Japan, China, and Taiwan. Some of these nations are among Kyiv's closest partners. Last week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said over 100,000 foreign-made parts were found among the 550 Russian drones and missiles used in a large-scale bombardment, underscoring the scale of the problem.

Headlines promised that AI would transform every corner of business. Venture capital poured into the sector. But hype doesn't always translate into real-world use—especially in industries that aren't built to adopt change quickly. Food procurement, where billion-dollar decisions hinge on weather patterns and multiyear contracts, not to mention generational relationships and personal rolodexes, is one of those industries. In a space where legacy companies tout decades of experience, newness isn't always a boon.

German Minister for Digital Affairs Karsten Wildberger emphasizes that Europe's call for digital sovereignty should not be confused with protectionism. According to him, Europe must develop its own digital infrastructure. This is to reduce dependence on American technology companies. That does not mean that cooperation with the United States should be ruled out. In an interview with Reuters, Wildberger explains that Germany and the European Union can no longer be mere spectators or customers in the digital sector, but must play an active role themselves.