Anti-theft drive demands 'immediate' report from shipper to shipping line

ALTHOUGH REPORTS are reaching FTW about increasing theft from export containers, that's not where the real problem lies, according to Andre Swanepoel of Bridge Shipping. "In our experience, the boxes that are being targeted are the imports carrying high-value goods," he said. "And the break-ins are usually on the SA landside leg, not from the ship." He also feels that it's not as prevalent as it was when most of the boxes went by rail. "Most of the attractive commodities now go by road," he said. Swanepoel also noted that "everybody" was now using bolt seals. "That keeps away the opportunists," he said. "They'd need a pretty good pair of bolt cutters to do the trick." But break-ins to export boxes are a problem, according to Toggs Rossouw, national security manager for Safmarine. "However," he said, "we are not getting regular feedback from the shippers. And we need that information as soon as possible so we can investigate. "We, as Safmarine, have a very good relationship with customs and police in most of the countries we deal with. But we can't do much if we are not told what's happening." Rossouw also stressed that this area of theft was just one of the problems on the agenda before the private sector/police forum that has been established by the lines and forwarding community at City Deep. The evidence that has already been gathered by this forum indicates that theft from the export side is "very, very little" in the overall scheme of things, according to Roadwing's Isobel Louw - the driving force behind the business/police co-operative forum. "This because the bulk of the exports are raw materials and the like - not easily saleable on the streets. You steal a load of copper, for example, and you're going to have to have a specialist fence who can deal in things like this." In this, she agrees with Swanepoel's reasoning - that the professional thieves tend to hit import boxes, which contain the juicy type of goods that they can easily sell at good prices. "These syndicates are the selective ones," she said, "with inside knowledge of exactly what's in the boxes. "In the case of the removals you are talking about, these are more likely to be the opportunists who are just looking, and hoping for something good to steal." The big problem area in the last 18-months, Louw added, has been on the railways "where the seals have been broken as the crooks examine what's in the boxes", she said. This again in a random selection, where the criminals are looking for saleable items. "It's the same at both the port and the railways," Louw added. "They break into a lot of containers, but only pilfer from one or two. "But Spoornet is trying to sort out this problem with special wagons where the containers can be loaded door-to-door. That's the answer there." In the case of broken seals being replaced by others, Louw suggested that most of these were normal handling or transit breakages, with customs or Portnet putting new seals on afterwards. But, where theft is involved, Louw stressed that shippers must notify their shipping lines "immediately". "It's the only way that we can do anything to sort out this problem."