EMEA CARGO CRIME ANNUAL DATA


found the opportunity to target products too good to miss out on. In the 12 months covered by this report, 19 TAPA IIS product categories recorded cargo thefts.


The top three product types suffering losses in 2020 were:


• Food & Drink – 536 cargo thefts • Tobacco – 403 incidents


• No Load (Theft of truck and/or trailer) – 282 thefts


Other products suffering high loss rates from supply chains in the last calendar year included Furniture/Household Appliances (240 loss incidents), Clothing & Footwear (213), Cosmetics & Hygiene (150), Tools/Building Materials (97), Metal (87), Computers/Laptops (68), and Pharmaceuticals (67).


Quick to respond to changing market demand, cargo thieves also targeted shipments of Personal Protective Equipment as well as supply chains moving highly sought-after products such as face masks and hand sanitisers. In one crime alone in Spain in April, two million facemasks and other PPE equipment worth €5 million were stolen from an Origin Facility in Santiago de Compostela. This was far from the highest-value loss of the year, however, which involved the robbery of a cash-in-transit vehicle in Lyon, France, in August and the theft of €9 million in cash. This was one of 19 incidents in 2020 recording losses of more than €1 million in TAPA’s incident database.


Trucks, trailers and Last Mile delivery vans were by far the most popular target for cargo thieves, as in previous years, led by 3,644 cases of Theft from Vehicle, 56.3% of all crimes recorded. This compared to only 212 crimes recorded as Theft from Facility in 2020.


With TAPA EMEA estimating a shortfall of over 2,000 secure truck parking sites and a lack of over 400,000 parking places in the region, vehicles were – once again – the most frequent victims of a cargo crime when they were parked in unsecured parking locations including roadside laybys, at truck stops and motorway service areas, or in open spaces on industrial estates. The lack of secure truck parking, especially in Europe, was identified in over half of all crime reports to TAPA’s IIS in 2020.


Violence or the threat of violence was the modus operandi reported in 232 incidents, although, again, TAPA believes the true figure to be far higher. In 2020, particularly violent incidents reported to the Association involved fatalities of police officers, drivers, at least one member of the public, and offenders killed in gunfights with law enforcement officers.


31 of the 56 countries recorded cargo thefts involving violence. South Africa saw the highest number of violent attacks, followed by the United Kingdom, Spain and France.


Criminals continued to deploy various types of M.O. to target goods in-transit and in facilities. These included the use of:


• ‘Blue lights’ to impersonate police and traffic officers to stop trucks


• GPS ‘jammers’ to block vehicle security tracking signals


• Fake documentation for drivers, vehicles and companies to facilitate cargo collections


• Roadblocks using cars, trucks and fires


• Driving vehicles through closed gates to gain access to transport yards and warehouse facilities


• Online freight exchanges to propose low- cost transportation services in order to be awarded shipment deliveries


• Gas attacks on drivers taking rest breaks in their cabs, and the use by offenders of pepper sprays to incapacitate drivers


• ‘Vehicle breakdown’ alerts by drivers on long distance routes in more remote locations to buy time for drivers, vehicles and loads to disappear


The global focus on supply chains throughout the Covid pandemic has brought one upside for TAPA EMEA with its membership in the region rising to a record level. Some 150 companies have joined the Association since


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the start of 2020 as more Manufacturers/ Shippers and Logistics Service Providers look for proven ways to increase their supply chain resilience. As well as incident intelligence, TAPA EMEA offers industry standards for facilities, trucking operations and secure parking, as well as training and secure route planning tools.


Marcel Saarloos, Chair of TAPA EMEA, added: “TAPA EMEA members’ supply chains are among the most resilient in the world but for the industry- at-large, the risk of cargo theft, and all of the business and reputational damage this causes,


is never far away. Even though we know the big picture of cargo crime is far greater than the level of intelligence we receive, in the last two years alone, TAPA EMEA has recorded over 15,000 losses from supply chains in our region with a combined loss value of more than €310 million – which is the equivalent of €424,000 of goods being stolen from supply chains on every single day of 2019 and 2020. This should act as a big ‘wake-up call’ for everyone involved in the movement of goods by all modes of transport because almost every type of cargo is a target for criminals.”


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