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Three months ago, TMX Transform released the inaugural edition of Across the Network. At the time, businesses had an increasingly stable environment for supply chain transformation and long-term projects. Construction costs had moderated and the property market had room to move while automation was maturing.
Then the US-Iran conflict, rising fuel prices, and broader macroeconomic uncertainty changed the conversation. Since then, there has been plenty of commentary about the impact of global supply chain disruption, much of it leaning towards worst-case scenarios. The second edition of Across the Network, TMX Transform’s quarterly report covering supply chain, industrial property, and project services across Australia, cuts through the noise to focus on what is actually happening on the ground and what it means for the decisions in front of you. MHD readers can download the full report to see TMX’s proprietary Q1 2026 cost benchmarking data covering 3PL warehousing and transport rates across Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane.
A snapshot
Supply Chain: Compared with COVID, the response to current disruption is more measured, with the opportunity to be proactive rather than wait for conditions to settle. On the domestic transport side, margin compression is being passed through to supply chain operators and built into pricing. In ocean freight, service risk is increasing – not just cost – with carriers withdrawing capacity and prioritising higher-margin customers. In a volatile environment, leaders need clarity on where they are exposed, how long they can sustain performance, and what actions will stabilise the business quickly – prioritising decisions that protect service, revenue and resilience.
Property: Construction cost increases are being locked into rents, and they are not going backwards. Occupiers running down leases are being caught out by significant renewal increases and limited incentives, while higher-clearance, higher-capacity sites are increasingly offering better value than like-for-like renewals. CPI, interest rates, land tax, and employment costs are all compounding, prompting some occupiers to pause but the report’s evidence is clear that delaying will cost more, not less.
Project Services: Concrete and PVC costs are rising, with further increases predicted, though overall project pricing differentials remain moderate compared with market speculation. Rise-and-fall clauses are emerging in development and lease agreements, transferring a portion of material cost risk to tenants. Internal approval delays are compounding cost exposure: a two-to-three-month lag between costings and contractual agreement can result in builders repricing. Fire approval complexity continues to present a material execution risk for automated facilities, and data centre demand is creating potential downstream constraints on industrial power supply and land.
What the report unpacks
The report includes TMX Transform’s latest proprietary cost benchmarking data covering 3PL warehousing and transport rates across Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane, updated to reflect the current market. For supply chain and logistics decision makers benchmarking their spend or planning a new operation, it is one of the few places to access current market rates in a single source.
Beyond the benchmarking, each section of the report digs into the detail behind the headlines. On the supply chain side, Charlotte Jordan, Executive Director of Supply Chain examines where pressure points actually sit across suppliers, sourcing geography, property exposure, and construction timing. In property, Stefanie Frawley breaks down why the maths on waiting doesn’t add up, with analysis across Victoria, Queensland, and Sydney covering vacancy, rental dynamics, and the growing impact of data centre demand on land supply. In project services, Angus Perry provides specific cost movement data on materials including concrete and PVC and examines how internal approval delays and the emergence of rise-and-fall clauses are reshaping project risk.
“We are hearing from occupiers that waiting is the right thing to do. Our view is the opposite. Speculative options are diminishing," says Stefanie Frawley, Executive Director, Property
Construction costs are being built into the cost of development, and they are not going to go backwards. For occupiers looking for quality product, the message is to act now.
A diagnostic approach to the big questions
In a volatile environment, leaders need clarity on where they are exposed, how long they can sustain performance, and what actions will stabilise the business quickly – prioritising decisions that protect service, revenue and resilience. The report provides a snapshot into TMX’s diagnostic for supply chain resilience.
- How long is your business exposed and for how long? (what happens to your cost base if fuel surcharges continue to rise?)
- How long can your supply chain hold before service is affected? (what does it look like if you need to bring overflow sites back online to manage incoming inventory?)
- What’s at stake for your customers and your bottom line? (How can you extend capacity within your existing network if going to market for a new site is not the right move right now?)
- What does your supply chain look like on the other side? (building a clear picture of what “stabilised” looks like and planning beyond the immediate response).
"What's been missing is someone who connects all of that into one integrated process, from site selection and energy through to construction and exUse this period to genuinely understand your supply chain. Not just the obvious pressure points, but the ones you haven’t looked at yet," says Charlotte Jordan, Executive Director, Supply Chain.
Supplier concentration, network performance under different cost scenarios, operational readiness for automation. If you can build that picture now, you are in a far stronger position to stabilise and increase profitability.
The forces shaping the rest of this year
Also in the report, TMX Transform identifies the biggest emerging pressures heading into mid-2026: data centres competing for greenfield land, power infrastructure, and labour, with potential implications for the pipeline of ready-to-occupy industrial stock; rise-and-fall clauses transferring material cost risk from developers to tenants; the diesel price increase adding complexity to interstate fulfilment models; internal approval delays compounding cost exposure on construction projects; and fire approval complexity continuing to catch out occupiers on automated facility builds.
Across the Network, TMX Transform’s Q2 2026 Quarterly Insights Report is here.
This article was originally published in MHD Supply Chain on 30 June 2026.