Hormuz Closed: What About Your Shelves? | Break It Before the World Does Ep. 1 | Konjugate Logistics

In March 2026, container ships almost stopped passing through the Strait of Hormuz. Jebel Ali, one of the busiest ports in the world, lost 89% of its container imports, while ports on the other side of the mountains took in more than twenty times their usual cargo.

In this episode we put an imaginary grocery chain in Dubai on a real map, with real port data from IMF PortWatch, and close the strait. Which stores run out, and for how long? Does sending the cargo round to Khorfakkan save them, and what does it cost?

Everything runs in Konjugate Logistics, a free and open-source toolbox for modelling supply chains on a real map and breaking them to see what happens. It compares choices over the same days. It does not forecast.

The grocery chain, its stores and its sales are invented. The port data and the closure are real.

Chapters:

• 0:00 The strait
• 0:36 Dubai
• 1:03 Two Dubais
• 1:21 Roads from a file
• 1:48 Real port data from IMF PortWatch
• 2:34 An imaginary grocery chain
• 3:37 Closing the strait
• 4:54 Sending the cargo round
• 5:58 What the model doesn't know
• 5:58 Inside Konjugate
• 6:22 What to trust
• 6:55 The series

Konjugate and the Logistics toolbox: https://github.com/zenineasa/Konjugate

The series, Break It Before the World Does, breaks a supply chain in seven places: Dubai, your own city, Bangalore, Mumbai, Rotterdam, Lagos and Ho Chi Minh City.

Sources: port activity and chokepoint transits from IMF PortWatch (Source: International Monetary Fund). Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL. Coast and borders: Natural Earth.

#supplychain #logistics #simulation