diff --git a/maven-core/pom.xml b/maven-core/pom.xml
index a37bdb60b2..a21ff4ffea 100644
--- a/maven-core/pom.xml
+++ b/maven-core/pom.xml
@@ -98,6 +98,18 @@
       <groupId>org.sonatype.plexus</groupId>
       <artifactId>plexus-plugin-manager</artifactId>
     </dependency>
+    <dependency>
+      <!--
+      NOTE: This is originally a transitive dependency of plexus-plugin-manager. However, unless we specify this
+      artifact as a direct dependency of ourselves, Maven's project sorter will not detect the (indirect) dependency
+      of maven-core on maven-mercury. Proper detection of this dependency is crucial to ensure that maven-mercury is
+      built before maven-core. Otherwise, Maven would query the repos instead of the reactor cache for maven-mercury
+      when building maven-core, happily using out-dated snapshots and potentially failing the build.
+      -->
+      <groupId>org.apache.maven</groupId>
+      <artifactId>maven-mercury</artifactId>
+      <version>${project.version}</version>
+    </dependency>
     <dependency>
       <groupId>org.apache.maven.shared</groupId>
       <artifactId>maven-shared-model</artifactId>
@@ -108,7 +120,7 @@
       <plugin>
         <groupId>org.codehaus.plexus</groupId>
         <artifactId>plexus-component-metadata</artifactId>
-      </plugin>    
+      </plugin>
       <plugin>
         <groupId>org.codehaus.modello</groupId>
         <artifactId>modello-maven-plugin</artifactId>