The Transported Asset Protection Association’s (TAPA) programme to reduce cargo thefts and increase supply chain resilience in Europe, Middle East & Africa (EMEA) region has a new partner: Bosch Secure Truck Parking, a digital booking platform for truck parking spaces in Europe. The partnership is contributing to a 42.9 percent growth in the Association’s database of secure parking places in the last 12 months.

Designed by its Manufacturer and Logistics Service Provider members, TAPA’s Parking Security requirement (PSR) industry standard was launched in 2019 to help the Association’s members identify secure parking places in the region which met their security needs. Product losses from vehicles left in unsecured parking locations accounted for 53.8 percent of the 8,548 cargo thefts recorded by TAPA’s Incident Information Service (IIS) last year. Crimes were recorded in 48 countries across the region, with a value of more than £137 million for the 39.1 percent of these incidents sharing financial data.

TAPA’s PSR programme now covers over 6,700 secure parking places at 63 sites in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, South Africa, Spain, and the United Kingdom. TAPA hopes to increase this number to 15,000 by the end of 2020 to help meet growing demand. According to estimates, Europe alone has a shortage of 400,000 secure parking spaces for trucks.

Bosch Secure Truck Parking operates a network of around 50 secure truck parking locations across Europe in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands. New sites in Romania and Sweden will be added soon. Under its commitment to TAPA’s PSR, the first two sites in Germany have already adopted Partner status. As well as its online portal for secure parking, Bosch operates one of Europe’s largest monitoring centres for cargo theft prevention as part of its portfolio of solutions, which also include video cameras with intelligent video analytics.

Dr. Jan-Philipp Weers, Head of Bosch Secure Truck Parking, said, “We appreciate the TAPA initiative to define an industry standard for secure parking. TAPA is an authority for securing supply chains. Parking places so far were a blind spot but TAPA has now closed the gap with the introduction of its PSR programme. TAPA’s 20 years of offering sustainable industry standards for facilities and trucking, as well as its broad supply chain resilience focus, gives us confidence in its PSR Standard and we expect more of our secure parking locations to join the programme.”

“Bosch Secure Truck Parking joins many other professional Parking Place Operators (PPOs) which are supporting TAPA’s PSR. The growth of this initiative is very good news for manufacturers and their logistics partners because the lack of secure parking for commercial vehicles operating in supply chains across EMEA is the biggest single contributor to rising cargo crime. Based on losses reported to TAPA, cargo thefts more than doubled in 2019 to a 23-year high. We still have a long way to go to meet the level of demand for secure truck parking, but it is already clear that both buyers and operators see TAPA’s industry standard as the solution they want to support. We are delighted to welcome Bosch as our latest Partner and look forward to growing their participation in our PSR programme,” added Thorsten Neumann, President & CEO of TAPA EMEA.

By integrating its unique incident information and secure parking databases, TAPA members have access to a digital supply chain resilience tool which identifies cargo crimes on specific transport routings across EMEA to support risk assessment and loss prevention as well as a listing of the nearest TAPA-approved secure parking locations to ensure drivers, vehicles and high value, theft targeted loads remain safe during mandatory rest breaks. This includes a quick and easy guide to the site’s facilities and booking information.