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Don’t sit back and become a victim, warns security chief
[ November 4, 2015 // Chris ]A supply chain security chief is calling on businesses not to become a victim of cargo crime before taking action to securing their supply chains.
With the Transported Asset Protection Association (TAPA)’s latest figures for Q3 2015 showing a further 10.6% year-year rise in incidents in the region, Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) chairman, Thorsten Neumann, warns that cargo crime can be extremely costly and damaging. He said: “Aside from financial losses, it harms relationships between customers and suppliers and impacts the reputations of companies, which ultimately affects business retention for transport and logistics companies. Our message is simple. Don’t wait to become a victim, do everything you can to make your supply chains as resilient as possible. The adoption of TAPA Security Standards should be part of that process and we are now actively talking to our manufacturer and buyer members – and industry at-large – to ask them to encourage and support their service providers to make this step up.”
TAPA recorded 238 cargo crime incidents in the three months to 30 September 2015, including the loss of €1.4 million worth of postage stamps following a theft from a warehouse in Ile-de-France near Paris, and the theft of €635,000 of cosmetics and fragrances from a truck parked overnight in Rugby, UK.
Only 18% of the 238 new cargo crimes reported a value but the total loss for these incidents alone was €4.3 million, including ten major crimes with a loss value in excess of €100,000. Three of these highest value crimes occurred in the UK, two took place in France and thefts were also recorded in Belgium, Italy, Kenya, Netherlands and Norway.
Some 91.5% of all crimes took place in just six countries; Netherlands,UK, Belgium, Germany, France and South Africa, with food and drink the most targeted goods in crimes where the product type was indicated. TAPA also recorded thefts in clothing and footwear, furniture and household appliances, computers, cosmetics and hygiene, tobacco, metal, tools and building materials, tyres and car parts, pharmaceuticals, toys and games, cash, bicycles and phones.
The Netherlands was the country with the highest number of cargo crime incidents in the three months with 105 and the UK was next with 53, although this partly reflects the proactive approach of their law enforcement agencies in capturing and sharing cargo crime data.
The vast majority of cargo losses involve high value, theft attractive products moving on trucks, with 46.3% of incidents involving theft from vehicle, 13.5% theft of vehicle and 9.3% theft of trailer.
Thefts fromfFacilities accounted for only 3.4% of the 238 incidents in the quarter.
Trucks stopped in unsecured parking locations continued to be at the greatest risk of attack by cargo thieves,with 52.1% of 124 cargo thefts were reported as taking place at such locations, usually at lay-bys close to major roads and on industrial estates.
In September, TAPA launched a global certification campaign to get more logistics service providers and transport companies to adopt its Facility Security Requirements (FSR) and Trucking Security Requirements (TSR). For more information should contact certification.campaign@tapa-global.org
Tags: TAPA