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The Brave New Business Journal
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Issue 03 · Tuesday, 19 May 2026 · Reading time: 5 minutes
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The dashboard
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Brent.
$99.12 on 16 May. Week six inside the Hormuz disruption band. BMI
flagging Brent futures as understating physical stress.
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Hormuz.
~22,500 mariners across ~1,550 vessels still stranded west of the
strait. Through-traffic at ~5% of pre-war norms. Iran rolled out a transit-fee
mechanism on 17 May for vessels using its permit-based corridor. DHL pencilling
four-to-six-month normalisation. Trump-Xi Beijing talks ongoing.
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TTF gas.
€38.40 per MWh.
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Rhine at Kaub.
Rising back toward normal after mid-May rain. Cargo sailings at 70-90%
capacity, against half-full early last week (Reuters, 13 May). Chokepoints
further south still constrained.
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Drewry WCI.
Composite at $2,553 per FEU, up 12% week on week. Shanghai to Rotterdam
at $2,413 per FEU (+11%). Shanghai to Genoa at $3,701 per FEU (+20%) on Med
diversion premium.
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CBAM Phase 2.
Commission to present its EU Fertilizer Action Plan on 19 May, the same
morning this newsletter lands in your inbox. Article 27a suspension clause on
ammonia and urea imports is the most-watched line. Mandatory CBAM Phase 2
reporting still tracking for 1 October.
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ECB. Next
monetary policy decision 11 June 2026.
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McKinsey read of the
week. "Code and cargo: How AI could change freight logistics,"
published 8 May 2026 on the McKinsey Logistics Insights page.
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01 · READER COMMUNITY
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The email where I say thank you
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This is the gratitude email. I am starting with it, not closing on it.
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When we launched this newsletter, we did not know who would read it. We knew
the industries we work in (manufacturing, freight, FMCG, pallet ops, industrial
real estate) and we knew the audience inside them reads less than it writes,
and writes less than it should. The bet was simple. One operational read on
Tuesday at 07:15. The right people would find it.
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You did. The forwards into procurement teams in Rotterdam, Hamburg, Antwerp,
Marseille. The DMs from Düsseldorf, Milan, Madrid. The screenshots of last
week's post landing in your group chat. Every signal. We see them.
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So this issue does two things. A gift. A thesis.
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The gift
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Open today. First five replies get the slot.
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Five readers get a free 30-minute professional voice audit with one of our
senior comms specialists. Not a sales call. A real audit.
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You send your LinkedIn profile, your About section, your last ten posts. We
read them. We come on a thirty-minute call and tell you, in operator language,
what your real voice sounds like, what you are leaving on the table, and the
one post you should publish this week to fix it.
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Anne reads every reply and assigns the slot the same day. No retainer pitch at
the end.
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The thesis
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The mistake most European supply chain leaders make on LinkedIn is binary.
Either they post nothing about macro events ("nobody cares what I think about
Brent"), or they post a Reuters headline with a thumbs-up emoji.
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Both are wrong.
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The procurement officer reading your feed does not need your opinion on Brent.
She needs your read on what Brent at $99.12 means for the inbound TL panel she
is rebuilding for Q3. She does not need your opinion on the McKinsey
AI-in-freight piece. She needs to know what you are doing about it this week,
on a named lane, with a named customer.
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McKinsey's own framing makes the point: "The most effective companies will find
ways to fuse AI with the assets that are hardest to replicate: large networks,
trusted relationships, deep operational experience, and proprietary data at
scale." That is not a strategy slide. That is a LinkedIn post waiting to be
written by an operator who actually has the lanes, the relationships, the
experience, and the data.
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The opinion question is the wrong question. The translation question is the
right one.
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Each of the ten ideas below is a translation device.
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02 · 10 IDEAS
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The 10 ideas. With European examples.
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01 · The Local Translation
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What it is.
Take the global headline. Rewrite it as what it means in your lane this
week.
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Example post.
Brent $99.12, week six inside the Hormuz band. For our Med inbound lane
that means the bunker adjustment on the 26 May sailing window is going up 4.1%,
not the 2.3% the headline suggests. Procurement officers running Q3: rebase the
fuel line now, not in June.
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02 · The Number Your Peers Have Not Seen
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What it is.
Pull one number from a trade source your competitors are not reading.
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Example post.
McKinsey reports US consumers returned nearly $1 trillion in
merchandise in 2024, more than double the figure from four years prior.
Retailers now spend $200 billion a year recovering value from those returns,
and the survey says they recover only about half of each product's worth. For
European FMCG and apparel operators with US-bound flows, that is not a
headline. That is a Q3 RFP line item. Insist your forwarder shows
reverse-logistics handling cost broken out, not buried in a per-shipment
all-in.
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03 · The Customer Question of the Week
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What it is.
The question every customer asked this week. Answer it publicly.
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Example post.
"Should we put a CBAM allowance in the Q3 steel inbound budget?" Five
customers asked this between Mon and Wed. Yes. Phase 2 reporting becomes
mandatory 1 October. The default carbon intensity values are 18-24% higher than
mill-specific figures. Insist on mill-specific data or budget the default.
Allowance to model now: €14-€22 per tonne, depending on origin.
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04 · The Operator's After-Action Log
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What it is.
The call you made under pressure this week.
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Example post.
Wednesday 11:00, Antwerp dockers' strike notice goes out for 22-24 May.
I rebooked 14 containers to Hamburg by 11:30. Here is what I weighed, the call
I made, the email I sent the customer at 12:00, and what I will do earlier next
time.
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05 · The Contrarian European Read
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What it is.
When US trade press writes one story, write the European version.
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Example post.
US press is reporting LA-Long Beach has normalised. The Med version is
different. Genoa is still running a 9% inbound dwell-time penalty against
pre-disruption norms. Trieste up 14%. Marseille-Fos repriced its handling
charge last week. Q3 budget based on US headlines is off by mid-single digits.
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06 · The Regulatory Inflection
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What it is.
Within 48 hours of an EU rule change, publish the operational read, not
the legal read.
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Example post.
The Commission's updated CBAM default emissions table dropped last
Thursday. Aluminium default is 24% higher than what most importers used in Q1.
Implicit carbon price for cement is now €87 per tonne, not €71. The Q3
reporting window starts on dispatch date, not arrival. The cut-off is earlier
than most ops teams have budgeted.
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07 · The Trade-Press Reaction
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What it is.
React within 48 hours, with the angle the article missed.
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Example post.
McKinsey's 8 May piece on AI in freight logistics is being read in
Europe as a McKinsey-on-McKinsey strategy memo. It is not. It is a
procurement-officer's screening tool. The line "AI is unlikely to fully breach
the moats incumbents have established" is the line your customer is going to
print and bring to the Q3 carrier-RFP meeting. Three operators McKinsey cites
have already automated 60% of check calls, 73% of order acceptances, 80% of
paper invoice payments. If your forwarder cannot demonstrate any of those three
by September, you are buying 2021 technology at 2026 pricing.
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08 · The Quiet Win
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What it is.
While the news cycle was loud, you fixed something. Three steps. No
theatre.
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Example post.
Everyone watched Hormuz this week. We rerouted 6% of Q3 inbound
capacity off Hormuz-dependent lanes onto Cape rotations. Step one: pulled the
lane-level exposure map ops built in March. Step two: 48-hour quote round on
the top three at-risk lanes. Step three: notified the eight affected customers
before they asked. Total elapsed time: nine working days.
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09 · The Historical Parallel
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What it is.
Name the last time the industry saw this. What is different now.
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Example post.
2021 Ever Given lasted six days. We are in week six of Hormuz. Three
things still hold from 2021: emergency Cape diversions, surge in air-freight
for retail-electronics, 60-day lag between rate spike and inventory write-down
at retail. Three things are different in 2026: the disruption is regime, not
incident; Med alternatives have less capacity than they did three years ago;
procurement teams are using AI-agent RFP tooling that prices disruption into Q3
contracts faster than the 2021 cycle.
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10 · The "I Was Wrong" Post
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What it is.
Take a forecast that did not pan out. Name it. Update it. Show your
work.
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Example post.
In March I posted that Red Sea diversions would normalise by Q3. I was
wrong. The diversions are now structural through year-end. What I missed: the
insurance market repriced war-risk premia faster than carriers could absorb.
What I am watching now: the Cape capacity ceiling. We are not far off it. Hit
it before September and the Q4 contract round reprices again.
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03 · THIS WEEK'S READ
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The McKinsey read of the week
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One paragraph. Then back to the real work.
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The piece worth reading this week is McKinsey's 8 May "Code and cargo: How AI
could change freight logistics." Three lines to underline for your own writing.
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“AI is unlikely to fully breach the moats that incumbent
logistics providers have established. But it could reshape some of
the advantages that have often separated leaders from laggards.
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— McKinsey, 8 May 2026
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One.
"Will shippers just start routing all their freight using
large-language-model-based chat portals?" McKinsey's answer is probably not,
because incumbents still own the moats. But the question is the one your buyer
is asking in private. Your job is to answer it in public, on your lane.
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Two. "AI
is unlikely to fully breach the moats that incumbent logistics providers have
established. But it could reshape some of the advantages that have often
separated leaders from laggards." Translation: if you have been a laggard, the
gap is going to widen this year. The 11 June ECB read into Q3 RFP is the next
checkpoint.
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Three.
"One transportation company has implemented an AI-enabled supply chain
platform that has boosted productivity by more than 40 percent since 2022."
Forty per cent. Cite that number in your next renewal review. Do not cite it as
theory. Cite it as the benchmark you are tracking your own operation against.
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This week: 18-22 May 2026
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When
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Event
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Why it matters
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Where
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WhenMon 18 May
to Wed 20
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EventGartner
Supply Chain Symposium/Xpo Barcelona
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Why it
mattersEuropean edition. The procurement-track panels are the
ones worth a recap post the day after.
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WhereBarcelona
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WhenTue 19 May
to Thu 21
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EventCSC Live
Conference, Rotterdam
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Why it
mattersTheme: 'Trade, Tariffs and Tensions, How do we move
forward?' Networking reception aboard the SS Rotterdam.
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WhereRotterdam
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WhenWed 20 May
to Fri 22
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EventNext
Eurostat industrial production print
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Why it
mattersApril was +0.2% euro area, +0.8% EU. A surprise on May
data is the signal to watch.
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Where—
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Also on the radar this week:
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Antwerp dockers' strike notice (22-24 May)
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Rhine gauge progression at Kaub
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CBAM ammonia/urea suspension decision (Commission expected to move within 10
days)
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ECB rate decision 11 June
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Claim the audit
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Reply to anne@brave-new.com with the subject "I want the audit call 30
minutes." Tell us in two sentences what you are working on this quarter. First
five replies get the slot.
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Next Tuesday: how the 11 June ECB read flows into your Q3 carrier RFP. Reply
with your specific question and we will pick the best one for the issue.
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Anne BecheruFounder,
Brave New MediaWe
don't do gurus. We do growth.
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Brave
New Media
