Members and associates of the Transported Asset Protection Association (TAPA) reported over 3,800 cargo crimes in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) in 2009, costing manufacturers and logistics service providers losses of €120 million. In response to this, TAPA organised a special 24-hour conference to address the subject of ‘Freight Security in Practice’ in which over 200 security and transport specialists met to discuss increasing their joint efforts to combat cargo crime in the supply chain.

Overall, TAPA EMEA says 3,873 incidents were reported to IIS in 2009 with a total loss value of €120 million. Of these, 1,941 actually occurred during the calendar year and were reported in 31 countries in the EMEA region. In year terms of incident categories, there were increases in the number of ‘theft from facility’ and ‘hijacking’ cases but a fall in the number of events categorized as theft from vehicle, theft of vehicle, robbery, theft and fraud.

Commodities such as tobacco products, non-electronic, sports goods and ‘supplies’ all saw a higher level of losses in 2009 vs. 2008 but there was an encouraging downward trend in other areas, including metal, laptop/ PDA’s, mobile phone, pharmaceutical and medical products and computer software.

“Overall, we know from research among our members that participating in TAPA has enabled them to reduce losses in their supply chain. The €67 million of losses reported through our Incident Information Service (IIS) in 2009 is still a fraction of the overall total for the industry as a whole and we are determined to continue to drive this figure down through continued improvements in our security requirements, shared intelligence among our members and developing closer relationships with government and law enforcement agencies,” said the chairman of TAPA in the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region, Thorsten Neumann.