No enterprise is an island. Goods and services flow in from suppliers. Processes, knowledge and expertise are applied to create value-added offerings that are sold to customers who add further value to create other goods and services that are, in turn, sold to other customers and so on through to the final consumer.

When you include suppliers of wares for raw material extractors, along with recyclers that turn consumer and commercial waste into new raw materials and finished goods, it is a supply chain with no beginning and no end.