Matthew Holliday, pictured, Director of Approval Schemes at the National Security Inspectorate (NSI), explains its new role as an audit body of the Transported Asset Protection Association (TAPA EMEA).
Across the supply chain, security risks to goods in transit – being moved from manufacturing plants to distribution warehouses, and onwards to retailers or directly to buyers – remain largely hidden out-of-sight and unreported, yet significant in scale. The cost of theft and damage affects everyone involved: from goods producers to storage providers and freight transporters. Ultimately, the consumer pays. The statistics surrounding thefts of and from vehicles, trailers, containers and facilities in road, rail, aviation and maritime transportation are alarming – not just because of the scale of losses involved, but the discernible lack of recorded incidents.
What’s stolen
The Transported Asset Protection Association (TAPA) warns that the majority of cargo crimes go unreported. One of the most severely impacted countries for recorded cargo crime is the UK where, on average, over £100,000 of goods are reported stolen each day. Over 90pc of cargo losses reported to TAPA’s EMEA Intelligence System involve criminal attacks on vehicles, and in the UK alone over 3,800 incidents of cargo crime were reported to TAPA between August 2021 and August 2022. The most frequently stolen products measured by TAPA’s latest survey include pharmaceuticals, tools and building materials as well as toys, tobacco, IT equipment, phones, empty trucks, car parts, metal and household appliances. Yet even everyday items such as food and drink, clothing and footwear, cosmetics and hygiene products are at risk. Supply chains are seen as soft and lucrative targets, with attacks becoming smarter and increasingly sophisticated. Many crimes are aided by a simple lack of due diligence and, with its mission to minimise cargo losses, TAPA believes greater resilience can be built into supplier networks to reduce cargo thefts with wider use of best practice solutions.
Joint action
That best practice is embodied in TAPA’s three primary standards of facility security, trucking security and secure parking, against which NSI, as a TAPA regional independent audit body (since September), offers independent certification.
1) Facility security requirements (FSR) protect high value and theft-targeted products in environments such as warehouse operations, in-transit storage within supply chains and distribution centres. The FSR Standard specifies minimum acceptable security standards and processes to be used in maintaining this standard, including specifications for service providers to follow in order to attain TAPA FSR certification for one or more facilities.
2) Trucking security requirements (TSR) protects products transported by road, with the aim of preventing criminal attacks and ensuring the safety of drivers, vehicles and cargoes. The TSR Standard is applicable to operators of hard-sided trucks and trailers, rigid vans or fixed body trucks, sea container road transportations, and soft-sided trucks and trailers. It includes guidance on management support and responsibilities, tracking and tracing, on-route protocols, physical security, and driver security training.
3) Parking security requirements (PSR), is already the most adopted industry standard for secure truck parking, covering sites in 15 countries, but demand far exceeds supply. A severe lack of secure parking makes crimes against trucks in the UK worse. This presents a business opportunity for ‘parking place operators’ which meet required levels of supply chain security.
Trucks parked in unclassified or unsecured parking places are involved in over half of the thousands of cargo losses in the EMEA region as reported to TAPA and involve thefts of products valued at tens of millions of euros. Over 95pc of all recorded cargo thefts involve attacks on trucks and half of these crimes occur when trucks stop in unsecured parking places.
NSI audit
NSI trained auditors work with TAPA members – comprising manufacturers/shippers, logistics service providers, freight transport and security services companies – to support the adoption and more widespread use of TAPA standards, designed to combat the risk of both high value and not-so-high-value products being stolen during storage in facilities or transportation.
NSI’s extensive expertise in auditing organisations against standards will help deliver TAPA’s declared aim of driving more certification and improving the security of supply chains across the UK.
NSI is bringing its experienced auditors’ skillsets to bear in helping to cost-effectively tackle the high level and value of cargo thefts and looks forward to seeing increased supply chain resilience within the UK.
