The disruption caused by the conflict in Iran, with the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz to commercial traffic, has both direct and indirect effects across almost all economic sectors. While some may benefit, the overall balance of impacts is likely to be negative.
One of the national sectors most immediately and directly affected is road haulage. A recent study by CGIA Mestre attempts to estimate the consequences of rising diesel costs on the sector’s 67,350 companies and suggests that the shock could prove fatal for at least 13,000 of them.
These estimates are based primarily on financial considerations, even more than on profit and loss dynamics. The income statement impact is largely driven by the rigidity of contractual mechanisms used to pass increased fuel costs on to customers, due to adjustment systems that are insufficiently responsive to volatility. However, the most concerning and impactful issue is not the profit and loss effect, but the financial one. Fuel is typically paid for in the very short term (within 7–15 days), while revenues are collected between 60 and 120 days.
The sudden increase in fuel costs therefore creates an immediate cash requirement, potentially triggering a financial crisis for the most fragile companies—even where they are able to pass on the higher costs to customers without delay.
The Italian road haulage sector is particularly fragile due to the small average size of its companies. This results in an interdependent supply chain structure in which most smaller firms work for—and depend on—other companies that, in turn, serve end clients. Within this structure, a significant working capital requirement emerges, often at the limits of sustainability for smaller and more vulnerable businesses.
In principle, this requirement could be met through bank credit or Supply Chain Finance instruments (such as reverse factoring or confirming), whose purpose is precisely to act as buffers for liquidity needs. However, in practice, access to such tools for the most fragile companies is limited or entirely absent, due to a combination of very low risk appetite and the implementation and operational complexity of traditional Supply Chain Finance solutions, which creates substantial barriers to entry.
This does not mean there is no solution. Rather, it means that the solution requires more agile tools and a collaborative framework centred on the client company. In practice, the most common operational response to such crises is for the client company to anticipate payments to struggling suppliers, leveraging its own credit and reducing its available liquidity.
Polaris provides a more structured and efficient solution to manage liquidity needs across the supply chain, leveraging the client’s creditworthiness to secure funding from third-party financiers (banks, factors, alternative investment funds, etc.) in order to support and stabilise critical suppliers.
Polaris is an invoice trading platform where clients upload verified payables, and suppliers can sell them on a non-recourse basis at any time to a pool of financial operators willing to take exposure on the client. It is a simple solution that lowers the barriers to accessing Supply Chain Finance instruments, even for smaller suppliers with limited financial strength. For financial operators, Polaris offers the opportunity to acquire short-term assets backed by solid clients, with no dilution risk, while supporting the real economy and its underlying supply chains.
For a sector such as road haulage—and logistics more broadly—Polaris represents a structural solution that transforms trade receivables within the supply chain into liquid and tradable assets for supplier companies, reducing overall financial indebtedness across the chain. In this context, the willingness of contracting companies and end clients to establish working capital support programmes, using modern tools such as Polaris, is crucial for the sector’s resilience.
Polaris.
Solutions, not words.