Reshoring in 2026: The UK CEO’s Supply Chain Resilience Playbook

UK CEOs must now treat supply chain geography as a strategic board decision — the era of optimising purely for cost efficiency is over, and the case for reshoring and nearshoring has moved from contingency planning to competitive strategy.

According to EY’s CEO Outlook 2026, 78% of UK CEOs have altered their investment strategies over the past twelve months in direct response to geopolitical and trade policy developments. Of these, 32% have delayed planned investments, 31% have accelerated them, and 9% have stopped investments entirely due to geopolitical or trade policy factors. The combined effect of US tariff uncertainty, supply chain disruptions from the Indo-Pacific, and the UK’s evolving trade relationships post-Brexit has made supply chain resilience — through reshoring, nearshoring, or dual-sourcing — a C-suite priority for the remainder of 2026. CEOs who do not have a clearly articulated supply chain strategy to present to their boards are operating with a gap in their risk management framework.

Why Are UK CEOs Accelerating Reshoring and Nearshoring Decisions Now?

The drivers of reshoring are multiple and reinforcing. US tariff policy introduced in 2025 fundamentally changed the landed cost economics for UK businesses dependent on supply chains transiting through or originating in tariff-affected territories. Companies that previously relied on a single-country sourcing strategy — often China or Southeast Asia — have found that the cost certainty underpinning those arrangements has evaporated. At the same time, the UK government’s Modern Industrial Strategy has actively incentivised domestic production in priority sectors including advanced manufacturing, life sciences, and clean energy, with targeted grants and capital support available for qualifying reshoring investments.

According to the FESS Group’s 2026 analysis of UK manufacturing reshoring, one of the most compelling strategic benefits of reshoring is the reduction in supply chain lead times — from months to weeks in many cases — which allows businesses to respond more rapidly to market changes and customer demands. For UK manufacturing businesses, this responsiveness advantage is increasingly valued by customers who have themselves been burned by supply chain failures in the post-pandemic period. Reshoring also reduces foreign exchange exposure — a material consideration for CFOs managing FX risk in the context of sterling volatility and US dollar-denominated commodity pricing.

Executive Action

• Map your top twenty critical suppliers by geography and assess each against tariff risk, geopolitical exposure, and single-source dependency — present findings to the board as a supply chain risk register.
• Engage your CFO to model the full landed cost comparison between current offshore sourcing and reshored or nearshored alternatives — include tariff risk, FX exposure, lead time value, and resilience premium in the analysis.
• Identify which product lines or components are eligible for UK government reshoring incentives under the Industrial Strategy — and assign ownership of the application process to a named executive.

What Are the Real Challenges UK CEOs Must Solve to Reshore Successfully?

Reshoring is strategically attractive but operationally demanding. The most significant barrier in the UK context is skills. According to The Manufacturer’s 2026 UK Manufacturing report, a challenge associated with reshoring is the skills gap in the existing workforce — many skilled manufacturing jobs have been outsourced over years, leading to a decline in the pool of trained workers available in the UK. This skills deficit is not a problem that can be solved quickly: it requires sustained investment in apprenticeships, technical education partnerships, and workforce development programmes that run over three to five year timescales.

The second challenge is capital intensity. Building or rebuilding domestic manufacturing capability requires significant upfront investment in plant, equipment, and facilities. CEOs must make the case to their boards that this investment is justified by the resilience and strategic positioning benefits over a multi-year horizon — not just by cost comparison against offshore alternatives. This is a capital allocation conversation that requires both the CEO and CFO to present a coherent framework. Access INFORMD’s capital approval assessment template to structure the investment case for a reshoring programme. The third challenge is time: supply chain transformation takes eighteen to thirty-six months to execute at meaningful scale, which means decisions made today will not generate resilience benefits until 2027 or 2028 at the earliest.

Executive Action

• Conduct a skills gap analysis for any proposed reshoring programme before committing to timelines — workforce availability is the most common underestimated barrier to reshoring in the UK.
• Build a multi-year workforce development plan in parallel with the capital investment plan — engage local colleges, skills providers, and the Growth and Skills Levy framework to fund training pipelines.
• Set realistic timelines for the board: reshoring at scale takes eighteen to thirty-six months from commitment to operational capability — sequence the investment plan to account for this delivery horizon.

How Should UK CEOs Structure a Board-Level Reshoring Strategy?

A reshoring strategy presented to the board should not be framed as a cost optimisation exercise — it should be framed as a strategic resilience investment with a defined risk-adjusted return profile. According to EY’s CEO Outlook, 57% of UK respondents are currently undergoing a significant enterprise-wide transformation initiative, while 41% are planning to start within the next twelve months. Supply chain transformation is one of the most common components of these programmes, alongside digital transformation and workforce restructuring. Boards want to see the strategic rationale, the financial model, the risk assessment, and the execution plan — not just a case for reshoring on ideological or political grounds.

The most effective reshoring strategies are not binary — they do not require wholesale switching from offshore to onshore. The most resilient supply chain structures in 2026 are dual-sourced: primary production nearshored or reshored for the volume and strategic product lines, with offshore manufacturing retained for cost-sensitive commodity components where single-country risk is lower. This hybrid model delivers resilience without sacrificing all the cost efficiency benefits of global supply chains. CEOs should present this nuanced framework to their boards rather than an all-or-nothing choice. Use INFORMD’s strategic self-assessment tools to evaluate your supply chain resilience posture and identify priority areas for reshoring investment. For further strategic intelligence on supply chain transformation, explore our executive briefing library.

Executive Action

• Frame reshoring as a resilience investment with a risk-adjusted return, not a cost exercise — use scenario modelling to show the board the downside of supply chain failure versus the cost of reshoring investment.
• Design a hybrid supply chain model: reshore or nearshore strategic and high-risk product lines first, while retaining offshore sources for lower-risk commodity components.
• Establish a quarterly supply chain resilience scorecard for board reporting — covering supplier concentration risk, geographic exposure, lead time trends, and dual-source coverage by category.

INFORMD provides intelligence briefings, tools and frameworks for senior business leaders across technology, finance, strategy and compliance. Based in Milton Keynes, UK, we help executives stay informed and act with confidence. Explore our full briefing library or access our free assessment tools.

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