Geopolitical disruption in the Strait of Hormuz is often framed as an energy issue, but the risk extends much further. It is also exposing critical vulnerabilities in the semiconductor supply chain, particularly through the emerging helium shortage affecting industrial inputs and global manufacturing.

Critical industrial inputs moving through the Gulf underpin supply chains in semiconductor, healthcare, defence and advanced-manufacturing, creating knock-on effects for capital markets, financing and strategic transactions.

Helium illustrates the exposure. Qatar supplies an estimated one-third of global helium, much of it produced alongside natural gas processing at Ras Laffan, the world's largest liquefied natural gas (LNG) export hub. Helium is essential for semiconductor manufacturing, MRI scanners, aerospace systems, fibre optics and quantum computing. It also plays a critical role in advanced chip production used in AI infrastructure and data centres, where even minor supply disruption can affect manufacturing timelines and costs. It is a small-volume input where substitutions are limited and alternative supply is slow to secure.

Helium is also illustrative of a wider issue. Disruption at a physical maritime chokepoint can quickly transmit into sectors far removed from shipping or regional energy markets, exposing hidden dependencies across global supply chains.

What is the impact of the Strait of Hormuz disruption on global supply chains?

Following the outbreak of the US-Iran conflict on 28 February 2026, commercial shipping conditions in and around the Strait of Hormuz deteriorated rapidly. Market participants have had to assess a changing environment involving military activity, disrupted traffic, elevated war-risk premiums and sanctions uncertainty. The question has become whether transit remains not only safe, but commercially viable.

For many businesses, the distinction between formal closure and commercially insurable passage may matter less than the practical interruption to supply chains. A route can remain technically open while becoming commercially unusable.

The Strait of Hormuz is not only an oil and LNG route. Industrial inputs rooted deep within global manufacturing systems also move through it. Reports of disruption affecting LNG infrastructure at Ras Laffan have increased market focus on Qatar's helium production and export capacity. The scale and duration of disruption remain uncertain. Even a partial interruption could prove significant in sectors dependent on specialist industrial gases and LNG-linked supply chains as helium is difficult to replace in many specialised and high‑precision industrial applications.

How supply chain disruption affects listed companies and investors

A listed company may not operate in the Gulf or rely directly on helium, but can still face disruption through suppliers, equipment providers or customers whose own exposure is significant. The risk may not first appear as a commodity issue. In many cases, it may instead emerge as a technology or semiconductor supply chain issue, particularly where critical inputs such as helium underpin advanced manufacturing processes. It may emerge through delayed production, higher component costs, reduced customer demand, pressure on guidance or tighter working-capital conditions.

For example, disruption affecting fertilisers or sulphur markets may affect agriculture, mining, battery metals and industrial chemicals. A shock that begins as a maritime-security issue may therefore become a food, electrification, defence or medical-technology issue. Some boards may discover that one of their most material operational dependencies is an input they have never purchased directly.

Why duration matters: short-term disruption vs structural supply chain risk

The duration of the disruption may prove as important as its immediate severity. A short interruption may be absorbed through inventories, allocation, substitution and price increases. That would still create operational pressure, but much of the impact may remain temporary.

A prolonged disruption is different. If route uncertainty, insurance constraints, sanctions risk and elevated energy prices persist across multiple reporting periods, temporary contingency measures may begin to harden into operating assumptions. Customers may delay orders. Suppliers may allocate scarce inputs. Companies may defer capex. Forecasts may require revision.

Markets may also underestimate persistence risk where military developments create the appearance of rapid resolution while logistical systems remain impaired. Restoring stakeholder confidence can take longer than restoring formal navigability.

At that point, the issue is no longer simply whether the Strait of Hormuz reopens or whether a facility resumes production. Investors, lenders and boards may begin reassessing dependency risk more broadly across concentrated supply chains and strategic chokepoints previously treated as structurally dependable. The longer-term impact may therefore prove less about a single commodity spike and more about the structural cost of resilience.

Is helium becoming a strategic resource?

The current disruption highlights a familiar theme seen in rare earths and battery metals: concentration matters as much as scarcity. Helium supply is geographically concentrated, largely tied to LNG infrastructure and difficult to reroute, meaning disruption at a single node can have outsized global effects. These characteristics are likely to sharpen investor focus on supply diversification, storage and processing capacity, rather than raw resource availability alone.

Disruption risk may also extend into the specialised maintenance ecosystems that sustain critical infrastructure. Helium-based saturation diving systems are used in subsea inspection and repair in the North Sea and the Gulf, where helium's unique properties make substitution operationally impracticable.

Scarcity, however, does not guarantee durable value. Helium markets have historically moved between shortage and oversupply, with pricing reversing as new capacity comes online. Investors are therefore likely to distinguish between theoretical resource exposure and the ability to deliver consistent commercial supply. In practice, value may depend less on acreage and more on purification, liquefaction, logistics and enforceable offtake arrangements, with infrastructure and access often proving as important as reserves themselves.

Disclosure risk: what issuers need to consider under UK MAR

Disclosure obligations will depend on the issuer's jurisdiction and listing regime, including, for UK issuers, UK MAR and FCA expectations. General geopolitical volatility is unlikely to constitute inside information in itself, but the position becomes more complex where disruption has identifiable and potentially material effects on operations, guidance, liquidity, financing or strategic activity. That analysis is particularly challenging where exposure is indirect, with issuers potentially affected through suppliers, customers or counterparties without any direct contractual link.

This raises governance as well as disclosure issues. Reporting frameworks typically focus on direct relationships and known risk exposures, but disruption in Hormuz highlights the limits of that approach. Risk may arise without a formal closure of the Strait of Hormuz, including through impaired transit or commercial reluctance to enter the region. In that context, generic risk factors may become insufficient, with investors likely to expect more specific disclosure around supply chain concentration, infrastructure dependency, shipping disruption and alternative sourcing, as well as the potential impact on contractual performance.

M&A and investment implications of supply chain disruption

The disruption is likely to accelerate strategic activity across helium and related supply chains. The transactions most likely to retain long-term strategic importance are unlikely to be those driven solely by short-term scarcity pricing. The differentiating factor is more likely to be resilience. Whether an asset can continue delivering commercially reliable supply through periods of global disruption.

That shifts attention away from resource ownership alone and towards infrastructure, processing and purification capability, transportation access, storage and enforceable offtake arrangements. Market participants may increasingly target non-Gulf supply assets, seeking supply security and offtake protection rather than outright ownership. Minority investments, joint ventures, prepayment arrangements and offtake-backed financings may therefore become more common.

Buyers will need to distinguish temporary scarcity value from durable strategic value. A target may appear more attractive because of short-term disruption, but diligence should focus on whether it has reliable reserves, infrastructure access, processing capability, transportation arrangements and bankable offtake.

Shipping and logistics arrangements may require just as much scrutiny as the reserves themselves. Transaction documentation may also require closer attention. Buyers and investors are likely to focus on material adverse change provisions, force majeure clauses, sanctions undertakings, logistics covenants and price-adjustment mechanisms.

In the UK, transactions involving semiconductor supply chains, advanced technologies, critical industrial inputs or strategically significant infrastructure may also raise issues under the National Security and Investment Act. The UK Government has proposed standalone Critical Minerals and Semiconductors sectors as part of reforms to the mandatory notification regime. Even where helium assets themselves fall outside mandatory notification categories, transactions connected to strategically significant supply chains may still require careful analysis.

Beyond helium: wider risks across critical industrial supply chains

Sulphur provides a useful parallel. Significant volumes of seaborne sulphur and sulphuric-acid-linked trade pass through the Strait of Hormuz. Sulphuric acid is critical to the processing of copper, cobalt, nickel and lithium, including in mining and battery supply chains.

Disruption in Gulf exports may therefore affect sectors as varied as electric vehicles, consumer electronics, fertilisers and defence manufacturing. The same issue appears in fertiliser markets. Urea and ammonia are closely linked to natural-gas feedstocks, and Gulf producers are important suppliers to global markets. Disruption to production or shipping may increase agricultural input costs and affect planting decisions, crop yields and food supply chains on timelines that do not necessarily align with the restoration of oil flows.

In Japan, snack manufacturer Calbee recently announced temporary black and white packaging for certain products following disruption affecting petrochemical inputs used in printing inks. The commercial significance is not the packaging change itself, but what it signifies.

Businesses with no obvious connection to Gulf shipping may still face higher input costs, longer transit times, stressed counterparties and tighter liquidity conditions. That is especially relevant for issuers whose equity story depends on sectors ranging from AI infrastructure to advanced manufacturing. Those sectors may be exposed not only to energy prices, but also to narrow and comparatively invisible industrial inputs across global supply chains.

What should boards do to manage supply chain risk?

Companies should not plan solely for a short disruption. They should also test what happens if elevated energy prices, restricted maritime access, insurance constraints and critical-input shortages persist across several reporting periods. That does not require assuming a worst-case scenario, it means identifying where the business becomes vulnerable if a disruption initially treated as temporary begins hardening into an operating constraint.

Boards should identify where dependencies or Gulf shipping routes intersect with operations, manufacturing, counterparties or key customers. Listed issuers should assess whether existing disclosures remain accurate and whether contingency assumptions remain realistic.

Liquidity modelling matters. So do force majeure protections, termination rights and alternative sourcing arrangements. Boards should further consider whether existing risk systems are capable of identifying indirect exposure of this kind. Material vulnerability may arise outside of traditional supplier reporting systems.

The longer the disruption persists, the more likely it becomes that contingency measures evolve into structural decisions. Companies that diversify suppliers, reroute logistics, build inventories or secure alternative offtake arrangements may not reverse those decisions simply because the immediate crisis subsides.

The cost of resilience, and the memory of disruption, may therefore reshape how boards, investors and governments assess dependency risk for years to come. The current conflict illustrates how quickly a regional security crisis can become a much wider issue. It also demonstrates that the lasting effect of a chokepoint disruption may not be the interruption itself, but the reassessment of how much stakeholders are prepared to rely on critical routes, suppliers and infrastructure. In increasingly concentrated supply chains, seemingly marginal inputs can become systemically important very quickly.

For further information on the issues discussed in this article, please contact Charles Bond from our mining team or your usual contact in the firm's Equity Capital Markets or Natural Resources teams.