The Resilience of Logistics and Its Limits

Is logistics the most resilient industry?

When the Smart Maritime Network conference opened in Rotterdam this year, the first voice of the day belonged to Zera Zheng, Maersk's Global Head of Business Resilience and Consulting, in a conversation about how the current environment is affecting shipping in practice (Smart Maritime Network, 2026). Her theme captured a paradox that defines the sector, which is that maritime logistics remains behind on digitalisation and yet ranks among the most resilient industries there is, the kind that keeps moving when almost everything around it stops. The claim is appealing and largely deserved, but it is worth examining carefully, because resilience can mean very different things, and whether logistics is genuinely the most resilient industry depends entirely on which kind of resilience is being measured.

The case that logistics never stops

The strongest version of the claim rests on operational continuity, and here the evidence is genuinely remarkable. Shipping carries around 80 percent of world merchandise trade by volume, and through a decade of shocks that total has continued to climb, reaching 12,720 million tonnes in 2024, a gain of 2.2 percent that sat above the average of the preceding ten years (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development [UNCTAD], 2025a). What is striking is not the size of the growth but its persistence through conditions that should have broken it. When attacks in the Red Sea closed off the Suez Canal to most traffic, with transits running about 70 percent below their 2023 level by May 2025, ships did not stop but sailed the long way around the Cape of Good Hope, which pushed the total distance cargo travelled to a record even as volumes held (UNCTAD, 2025a). When disruption later reached the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly 11 percent of global trade and a third of seaborne oil pass, trade again rerouted rather than halting. The pattern holds across every recent crisis, in that the flow of goods bends around the obstacle and carries on.

Sometimes it is growing rather than supposedly surviving

The pandemic showed that logistics can do more than endure hardship, since at times it profits enormously from the very disruption that damages everyone else. As ports congested and supply chains seized up, container lines raised rates to extraordinary levels, and an industry that had earned about 25 billion United States dollars in 2020 went on to make a record of roughly 150 billion in 2021, with Hapag-Lloyd alone earning more in six months than it had in the previous ten years combined (Fortune, 2021). Across 2021 and 2022 the largest carriers booked some 364 billion dollars in net income after a decade of thin returns, a performance that observers read as evidence the sector had become more resilient than its own history suggested (gCaptain, 2022; Fortune, 2023). Even amid the Red Sea diversions of 2024, container volumes reached an all time high (SupplyChainBrain, 2024). For an industry routinely cast as a victim of crises, logistics has a striking habit of turning them to its advantage.

BUT resilience is not the same as stability

This is where the comforting story needs qualifying, because the same episodes that demonstrate operational resilience also expose a financial fragility that sits awkwardly with the label of most resilient. The windfall of the pandemic did not last, and by the final quarter of 2023 the major carriers had swung back into collective losses as rates fell below the cost of carrying the cargo, lurching from historic profits to below break even within the space of two years (Fortune, 2023). Freight rates that had been relatively stable for years now move sharply from one month to the next, a volatility that the head of UNCTAD described as the new normal, alongside the blunt observation that supply chains once assumed to be resilient had in fact proven fragile (UNCTAD, 2025b). Logistics, in other words, is operationally durable but financially cyclical, a sector whose volumes rarely stop but whose earnings rise and collapse with a violence that few other industries experience.

The industries that outcompete it

That distinction is exactly what separates logistics from the industries usually crowned as the most resilient. When analysts identify the sectors best able to withstand a downturn, they point not to shipping but to healthcare, consumer staples and utilities, the defensive sectors whose demand barely moves with the economic cycle because people continue to take medicine, buy food and keep the lights on whatever the conditions (The Motley Fool, 2026; NetSuite, 2025). Healthcare in particular is often regarded as the single most resilient sector, since most medical needs cannot be postponed and an ageing population provides a steady base of demand (Luth Research, 2026). These industries are resilient in the financial sense that logistics is not, delivering stable earnings through recessions rather than the dramatic swings of the freight market, although analysts are careful to add that no industry is ever entirely immune to a downturn (The Motley Fool, 2026). Measured by earnings stability, logistics does not win this contest, and it is not especially close.

A different kind of resilience

And yet the comparison, fairly made, also shows why the original claim is not simply wrong. The resilience of logistics is of a different species from the steadiness of a utility, because it is the resilience of a system that adapts under physical stress rather than one that enjoys predictable demand, and it operates at a level the defensive sectors quietly depend upon. A hospital can only treat patients if its supplies arrive, a supermarket can only stay stocked if its goods are delivered, and a power network relies on fuel and equipment that move by sea and road, so that the very industries that outperform logistics on earnings stability are resting on its continued operation. Seen this way, logistics may not be the most financially resilient industry, but it has a strong claim to being the most operationally resilient and the most adaptable, and arguably the most foundational, since its refusal to stop is what allows the steadier sectors to stay steady. That is the version of Zera Zheng's point worth keeping. The industry lags on digital tools and lives with brutal financial cycles, and still, through pandemic, war and closed waterways, it has yet to be made to stop.

References

Fortune. (2021, December 3). Shipping container lines on track to make a record breaking $150 billion this year from the supply chain breakdown. Fortune. https://fortune.com/2021/12/03/shipping-container-record-profit-supply-chain-breakdown/

Fortune. (2023, November 12). The shipping industry's boom and bust cycle is so severe carriers face going from bumper profits to losing money in the space of a few years. Fortune. https://fortune.com/2023/11/12/shipping-industry-faces-hardship-after-bumper-profits-in-pandemic/

gCaptain. (2022, August 9). Container shipping lines set to smash profit record. gCaptain. https://gcaptain.com/container-shipping-lines-set-to-smash-profit-record/

Luth Research. (2026, February 9). Which industry sectors are the most recession proof? https://luthresearch.com/glossary/which-industry-sectors-are-the-most-recession-proof/

The Motley Fool. (2026, March 18). Recession proof stocks: Industries that thrive during recessions. https://www.fool.com/investing/how-to-invest/what-to-invest-in/recession-proof-stocks/

NetSuite. (2025, November 12). Recession proof defined. https://www.netsuite.com/portal/resource/articles/business-strategy/recession-proof.shtml

Smart Maritime Network. (2026). Rotterdam conference 2026. https://smartmaritimenetwork.com/rotterdam-conference-2026/

SupplyChainBrain. (2024, September 1). Container carrier profits soar on record volumes, higher rates. https://www.supplychainbrain.com/articles/40290-container-carrier-profits-soar-on-record-volumes-higher-rates

United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. (2025a, September 24). Maritime trade under pressure: Growth set to stall in 2025. https://unctad.org/news/maritime-trade-under-pressure-growth-set-stall-2025

United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. (2025b). Review of maritime transport 2025: Staying the course in turbulent waters. https://unctad.org/publication/review-maritime-transport-2025