Supply Chain Collaboration among Agribusiness SMEs and Post-Brexit UK-Australia Trade
Agribusiness imports to the UK from Australia (AU) are currently constrained by several logistical and regulatory challenges—e.g., high transportation costs, long lead-times, low quotas, and high tariffs—which pose barriers for corresponding supply chains. Such roadblocks are more insurmountable for SMEs and new entrant producers and/or buyers with limited bargaining power as well as purchase/ production volumes which do not justify direct relationships with suppliers/ customers at a farther geographical distance. Horizontal cooperation among groups of buyers and/or sellers, in the form of purchasing groups or producer cooperatives, can boost supply chains and achieve the economies of scale which reduce production and logistical costs and justifies faster, though more expensive, trade routes.
This project aims to explore potential innovative supply chain solutions and identify opportunities for collaboration among groups of Australian agribusiness producers and UK buyers, with special focus on SMEs and new entrant firms. An indispensable dimension of this project is to incorporate drastic effects of current and near future political economy trends in logistical infrastructures, e.g., Brexit and development of China’s one-belt-one-road, which can cause easement in and recalibration of trade quotas and tariffs. Using scenario analysis, this project sheds light on required advance preparations for all UK-AU agribusiness supply chain parties, especially SMEs and new entrants.
While paving the way for collaboration between researchers in UK and Australia, deliverables of this project include knowledge dissemination with impact partners and academic community and scoping most promising directions of future research and pump-priming subsequent applications for larger national/international grants.
Meet the Principal Investigator(s) for the project
Dr Behzad Hezarkhani - Dr. Hezarkhani is a reader at Brunel University Business School. He is the director of Operations & Information Systems Management (OISM) research group . He is also the programme leader for the MSc program in Global Supply Chain Management (GSCM).
The primary area of his research addresses decentralized operations management and employs operations research, mathematical modelling, and game theory. Dr. Hezarkhani studies problems pertaining to cooperation and competition in a wide range of areas, e.g. inventory management, scheduling and production, transportation and logistics, and sales and marketing. His research appeared in journals such as Production and Operations Management, European Journal of Operational Research, Transportation Resarch Part B, OR Spectrum, and Journal of Scheduling among others.
Before joining Brunel in 2018, he was an Assistant Professor at Nottingham University Business School. Prior to that, he was a post-doctoral fellow and adjunct lecturer at Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands. He received his PhD at Faculty of Business Administration at Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada, where his doctoral dissertation won the 2010 Canadian Purchasing Research Foundation (CPRF) scholarship.
Related Research Group(s)
Operations and Information Systems Management - We specialize in responsible and sustainable operation management exploring information systems, operations research, management science, and general management and strategic management knowledge and approaches across public and private industry sectors
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Project last modified 15/07/2021