The trade that did not stop: what kept moving and why it matters

The coverage of Ukraine's wartime economy concentrated, understandably, on disruption — the closed ports, the destroyed capacity, the collapsed volumes.

The more analytically useful question is the opposite one. Which trade flows continued essentially without interruption, and what did those flows have in common?

What kept moving

IT services. Exports grew during the first year of the full-scale war. The work is location-independent, the clients were already remote, and the delivery model required nothing that could be physically destroyed. Companies relocated staff westward and internationally and kept contracts running.

Agricultural exports, after an interruption. Grain, oilseed and vegetable oil found routes — first through the western land border and the Danube, then through the maritime corridor. The volumes recovered substantially, and the demand never went anywhere because the product is a global staple.

Food processing for the domestic market. Dairy, bakery, meat processing and beverages continued serving a population that still had to eat. Domestic demand is the most robust demand there is.

Pharmaceuticals and medical supplies. Both imports and domestic production. Demand rose rather than fell.

Specialised industrial components. Where a Ukrainian supplier was the single source or one of very few for a specific part, the customer worked around every obstacle to keep the relationship, including financing relocation and holding higher inventory.

What they had in common

Three characteristics, and they generalise beyond wartime.

Low physical dependence on a specific location. Services and light manufacturing move; a steel mill does not.

Demand that is not discretionary. Food, medicine and critical components are bought regardless of conditions. Consumer durables and construction materials are not.

A relationship the customer could not easily replace. This is the decisive one. Where the Ukrainian supplier was substitutable, the customer substituted. Where they were not, the customer invested effort in continuity.

The lesson for supplier positioning

The third characteristic is the one a company can actually influence.

Being a commodity supplier means the relationship survives exactly as long as the logistics are convenient. Being a supplier of something specified, qualified and hard to re-source means the customer will work through disruption with you, because their alternative is a re-qualification process that costs them more than the disruption does.

That distinction was worth something in normal times and worth a great deal in these ones, and it is the most transferable finding of the whole period.

The lesson for buyers

Supply chain resilience is not primarily about holding inventory or dual-sourcing, though both help. It is about knowing which of your suppliers would work through a crisis with you and which would simply stop taking your calls.

That is a function of the relationship rather than the contract, and it is knowable in advance if you ask the question before you need the answer.

Related in this archive

• Entering the Ukrainian market: the checklist I actually give people
• Turkey and Ukraine: two Black Sea economies and a trade relationship with an unusual shape
• New air routes as a leading indicator of where trade is going
• Ukraine Annual Review 2024: the constraint moves to people

I saw the difference between the shipments that stopped and those that did not in my own order book: what continued without interruption was whatever would have halted the buyer's production line. A customer takes delivery of a critical spare even during a war and postpones a cosmetic item even in peacetime. That is the only question that fixes your position as a supplier — does the line stop without you.