# Toll Group Chairman Calls for Robust Supply Chains Amid Repeated Shocks By John Kim Canonical URL: https://www.tokenpost.com/news/business/50014 Published: 2026-11-06T10:16:58.000Z Updated: 2026-11-06T10:16:58.000Z Section: Business > Thomas Knudsen said companies should examine deeper supplier tiers and keep alternative transport modes available as disruptions continue to reshape global trade. Toll Group Executive Chairman Thomas Knudsen urged companies to prepare for repeated shocks with spare capacity and alternative freight routes, saying advance planning matters as disruptions keep challenging global trade. Knudsen distinguished robustness, which involves preparing before a disruption, from the pre-2020 approach to resilience: waiting for a crisis, then asking banks and logistics providers for help. He urged companies to assess suppliers in the second, third and fourth tiers. “A black swan event has become a flock of black swans,” Knudsen said at a summit in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. In his description, a robust network can shift among trucking, rail, ocean and air freight. It can also combine sea and air transport, sending cargo by one mode for part of its journey and another for the rest. “Today we’re doing trucking. Tomorrow we’re doing rail. We’re complementing with ocean and air,” Knudsen said. The flexibility can be costly. Knudsen said the expense can make it difficult to build a resilient supply chain for low-value goods such as cement. The disruption sequence discussed stretches from the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine to President Donald Trump’s 2025 tariffs, the end of de minimis and the U.S. war with Iran and closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Knudsen also said tariffs have pushed Chinese companies to seek new markets and manufacturing hubs. Asked whether that shift would reverse, he replied, “I don’t think so.” Toll Group, founded in 1888 and owned by Japan Post, provides freight forwarding and contract logistics across Asia. The region’s 11 ASEAN economies are worth about $4.5 trillion, while trade within the bloc accounts for about 22% of its total trade, compared with roughly 60% within the European Union. At the summit, James Nesbitt, Standard Chartered’s managing director and head of global subsidiaries for Singapore and ASEAN, said the bank’s corporate clients are making long-term strategic commitments to the region. He described those commitments as extending beyond setting up a factory in Indonesia and moving on. Supply risks can call for different safeguards depending on whether exposure is lasting or temporary, as outlined in an [analysis of lasting supply dependence and temporary shocks](). ## Links in this article - [analysis of lasting supply dependence and temporary shocks](https://www.tokenpost.com/news/business/40986)