After four consecutive years of escalating crime, 2019 has already become a record year for freight thefts of products from supply chains in the Europe, Middle East & Africa (Emea).
That’s according to new incident data reported to the Transported Asset Protection Association (Tapa), a global security network for everyone in the supply chain. Thefts in the region exceeded €55 million or more than €305 000 a day in the first six months of 2019.
After collating intelligence on 3 981 cargo crimes in 2018, Tapa Emea has already identified 4 198 incidents in the six months to 30 June, up 5.1%.
Thorsten Neumann, president & CEO of Tapa Emea, said: “While these figures should set alarm bells ringing for manufacturers and the cargo industry, they are still only a fraction of the full impact of freight losses in the region. Less than 30% of the losses in Q2/19 provided any financial data and, even more significantly, it is important to remember that we can only share intelligence on the thefts reported to our IIS database. The vast majority of crimes are still not being reported to us but we, and other associations we are engaged with, estimate the true cost of loss to be billions of euros every year in our region.”
In addition to incidents across Europe and Scandinavia, Tapa’s IIS recorded losses from trucks and warehouses in the United Arab Emirates, South Africa, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Ghana, Uganda and Morocco as the number of reported crimes grew 167% year-on-year to 1 485.
The majority of cargo losses involve thieves targeting goods onboard trucks, most notably when they are parked in unsecured or unclassified locations, according to Tapa.
