Australian businesses that scaled back supply chain resilience efforts in recent years are being urged to revisit their spare parts strategies, as fresh geopolitical and logistics disruptions expose just how quickly a single missing component can bring operations to a standstill, according to Dematic.

“Whether it’s a farmer waiting on a tractor part, a hospital needing a critical piece of equipment, a grounded aircraft, or a mining haul truck that’s temporarily out of action, the commercial consequences of spare parts delays have intensified and the pipeline of global risk is showing no sign of easing.”

Dematic, the global leader in intelligent automation and supply chain solutions, says the pattern is clear: many organisations ramped up resilience planning during Covid-19, then quietly wound it back as conditions normalised. With tariffs, shipping route disruptions, and renewed tensions around key trade corridors now in play, the company is warning that complacency is becoming expensive.

“Too many businesses treated supply chain resilience as a pandemic project rather than a permanent discipline,” said Terry Jamieson, Business Development Manager at Dematic Asia Pacific.

“The disruptions haven’t stopped, the Suez and Panama canals, tariff volatility, political upheavals, and now renewed pressure on shipping through the Middle East. The next event is always coming. Spare parts are where that risk shows up fastest, because when a critical component isn’t available, takes time to ship or the wrong item is sent, the whole operation stops.

“Unlike finished goods, spare parts sit at the intersection of engineering precision and logistical fragility. Many are low-volume, high-specification items sourced from a narrow pool of global suppliers, which means even a small disruption on the other side of the world can translate into weeks of downtime in Australia. Compounding this complexity is that many spare parts operations are holding over 100,000 different items in stock, with items added as new products are brought to market,” said Mr Jamieson.

“Currently, consumers and fleet operators are reporting multi-week waits for routine automotive parts that previously arrived in days; farmers are flagging shortages of tractor and harvester components alongside the well-documented fertiliser squeeze, a double hit during planting and harvest windows; and in aviation, a grounded aircraft is not just an inconvenience but a direct hit to revenue, customer trust and schedule integrity across an entire network.

“The pressure is just as acute in heavy industry. When a haul truck or piece of fixed plant is down at a mine site, the cost is not the part, it is the tonnes of ore that are not leaving the pit. In food and beverage manufacturing, a single failure on a production line can cascade into supermarket shelves running empty within days in a market that runs lean. The common thread across all of these sectors is that the financial exposure rarely sits with the component itself. It sits with everything that stops while the part is in transit,” he said.

Dematic is urging Australian operators to treat spare parts as a strategic category rather than a procurement afterthought. That means building visibility into what is held, where, and at what risk level, and using automation to manage inventory dynamically rather than relying on static minimums set years ago.

Key priorities include shifting critical spares closer to the point of use, identifying single-source dependencies before they become single points of failure, and using data to predict failure rather than react to it. Automated storage and retrieval systems, combined with real-time inventory intelligence, allow businesses to hold more of the right parts in less space without ballooning working capital, and ensure item fulfillment is fast and accurate.

“Resilience in your business and operations is about having the capacity to store the full range of spare parts to cover any disruptions, with the flexibility to add more parts as your product range expands,“ Mr Jamieson said. “It’s having full visibility of that inventory, and being able to pick and deliver parts fast and with complete accuracy.”

COovid-19, the Suez Canal blockage, Panama Canal drought restrictions, shifting tariff regimes and renewed geopolitical tension across key shipping corridors have shown that disruption is no longer the exception – it is the everyday operating environment. For businesses that rely on imported spare parts, that shift is fundamental, and the window to act is the quiet period between crises rather than the middle of the next one.

“The mistake is waiting until the next crisis to do the work,” Mr Jamieson said. “The businesses that will be in the strongest position in twelve months are the ones acting now, while conditions are stable enough to plan properly.”