By Marcia Jedd

Supply chain volatility appears to be here to stay. Driven by geopolitical conflicts, shifting trade and tariff policies, and even climate-related disruptions, managing supply chain risk has become serious business.

So how are manufacturers and food companies responding to disruptive forces like changing input costs, raw material swings and trade policy whiplash? Generally, they’re building optionality into their supply chains. Here are three emerging or accelerating trends in 2026 as these companies align their supply chain and warehousing strategies to stay flexible:

1. Diversify the supply base and regionalize where it makes economic sense

Manufacturers are moving away from single-source or single-country dependence, especially dependence on China, though they are not generally taking on complete domestic and nearshore strategies. Instead, manufacturers are adding alternative suppliers (sometimes called multi sourcing), shifting some of their sourcing and supplier bases toward the U.S. or Mexico or other close countries in nearshoring strategies, and reassessing which components or products actually need to remain globally sourced. They are doing so to pivot volumes quickly when tariffs or commodity prices jump.

The evidence is pretty strong. A full 77% of manufacturers in the Manufacturers Alliance’s January 2026 research said they had implemented physical supply-chain changes, up from 56% in 2025.

The 2026 30th Annual 3PL Study found 45% of shippers were shifting to alternative sourcing approaches because of tariffs and 40% were identifying new foreign suppliers. Lineage, a global cold chain warehousing operator, found that 32% of food and beverage companies surveyed were prioritizing domestic products and 67% expected more trade within the U.S. over the next year.

2. Smart inventory positioning with regional 3PL/warehousing strategies

Companies are becoming much more selective and strategic about where they hold inventory and how much. Rather than broadly rebuilding the old “just in case” inventory model, they’re using targeted inventory buffers to deal with volatility, combined with flexible warehouse capacity.

Regional 3PL and warehousing providers thus come into play as a strategic buffer. A manufacturer or food processor, for example, can place selected inventory closer to production or customer. Other strategies include using up overflow inventory during demand or sourcing swings, or shifting inventory between nodes to avoid capital commitments to a permanent second facility before determining whether the change is lasting. Especially for food and beverage companies, this is a relevant strategy: 47% of supply-chain leaders surveyed by Lineage identified flexible storage capacity as their greatest need from cold-storage partners.

And as we covered in July 2026, many companies have pivoted toward positioning all or part of their inventories in flexible multi-client 3PL spaces (without a fixed-asset commitment). They’re relying less on U.S. coastal distribution centers, and opting to bring stock to inland hubs, closer to key customers or consumers.  These strategies give companies the flexibility to reposition inventory in response to a looming tariff deadline, supplier disruption or production change, bringing inventory closer to customers as network needs shift.

We also noted in our February 2026 blog that many importers and manufacturers were stockpiling inventories with FTZ and bonded warehousing strategies to avoid or defer tariff increases.

3. Protect margins with pricing agility, contract terms and more

A structural shift in pricing behavior is underfoot and tariffs and trade uncertainty are key drivers. Consumers continue to face price increases as tariffs shift downstream. This year alone has seen more companies passing through more than half of their tariff-related costs to customers, according to a study by KPMG.

KPMG found that 78% of companies reported higher COGS in their most recent quarter (surveyed in Q2 2026) and 51% reported current margin declines. In short, over one-half of those firms surveyed planned price increases this year and they’re no longer absorbing a substantial share of higher costs. 

Companies are using a number of ways to effect price increases: landed-cost visibility, customer-specific pricing, contract reviews, and surcharges to name a few. They’re also conducting  product-level margin analysis, over more simple ABC analysis (or integrating both methods), to shift the focus from top-line revenue to true item-level profitability, and carefully considering the timing of price changes so they can recover cost increases without unnecessarily sacrificing volume. 

In short, true landed margin calculations combine product costs with freight, storage, import duties, and holding expenses right down to the individual customer, product, or sales channel level. Ultimately, the trend is away from treating supply chain costs as general overhead or separate operational expenses because it hides profit leaks.