Security standards that fight crime

The latest Cargo Theft 18-Month Report from Transported Asset Protection Association Europe, the Middle East and Africa (TAPA EMEA)* recorded data and information on 2 670 cargo thefts in South Africa across all nine provinces, including 2 236 truck hijackings and multiple attacks on freight facilities. This blight is costing businesses tens of millions of rands in production losses.

Crime data for the 18 months up to 30 June 2022 included a combined loss figure of €31.7 million (R630 million at time of FOCUS publication) – but this only accounted for the 3.4% of crimes that shared an actual financial loss figure. Based on these, major incidents involving goods worth more than €100 000 stood at €947 862 per crime (R18.8 million). 

“For victim companies, such high value losses impact customer relationships, damage their reputations, and lead to rising costs, such as higher insurance premiums,” says Thorsten Neumann, TAPA EMEA president and CEO. “Tragically, the high level of violence seen in attacks across South Africa continues to cost the lives of drivers, security guards, and law enforcement officers who find themselves innocently caught up in incidents as they do their jobs or pursue suspects.”

Sadly, truck hijacking is a rising trend. This is apparent if we look at the police crime statistics for the final quarter of each of the past four calendar years. In 2019, there were 325 hijackings, rising to 436 in 2020. This figure rose again in 2021, to 448, while last year had 492 reported incidents over a period of just 92 days, a staggering 9.8% increase in truck hijackings over 2021’s fourth quarter. 

More than 60% (307) of these trucks were hijacked in Gauteng. Four other provinces also recorded high rates of incidents: the Eastern Cape (54), Mpumalanga (53), the Western Cape (26), and KwaZulu-Natal (25). 

“The South African Police Service is working proactively to reduce truck hijackings and other types of cargo crimes and we applaud their initiative. They are also one of the few law enforcement agencies globally to record truck hijackings and cash-in-transit robberies as specific crime categories, which is especially useful intelligence for our member companies. However, the solution to rising crime is not just down to the actions of the police,” Neumann stresses. 

“Companies must, and can, do more to protect their supply chains if they understand the types of crimes, the modus operandi of cargo thieves, where incidents are occurring, and the types of goods being stolen. TAPA EMEA has this insight, as well as highly effective supply chain security standards to help protect facilities and trucking operations. We are confident these can contribute significantly to preventing losses and protecting company employees and police officers from the types of attacks we are recording,” he continues. 

TAPA EMEA’s standards provide a trusted framework to manage known risks, reduce loss exposure, protect assets, improve people’s security, and reduce the heavy financial and reputational costs that can result from a cargo theft incident. In short, by adopting the association’s standards, companies can work towards one common set of security requirements. 

TAPA EMEA offers three supply chain security standards: facility, trucking, and parking security requirements. Companies can select their preferred level of certification for each of these, to suit their security requirements and those of their customers. 

Massimo Carelle, lead for Africa at TAPA EMEA, notes that whilst the association has a high volume of incident data for cargo crimes in South Africa, it currently has very few losses reported to the TAPA EMEA Intelligence System (TIS) from supply chains in other countries in Africa. 

“We believe increasing the TAPA EMEA footprint and membership across this important and emerging continent will benefit all our members with supply chain operations in Africa. To drive this initiative forward, we are giving our former regional working group for South Africa a new remit covering the entire African continent,” he adds. 

TAPA EMEA held a regional conference in March. “Based on our very constructive discussions with local delegates in Johannesburg, we are launching a new TAPA EMEA subregional Africa membership for companies based in Africa. This is designed to give our new TAPA EMEA subregional Africa working group the impetus to introduce our association to more potential new members, intelligence providers, and users of the TAPA standards,” Carelle says. 

The costs and benefits are as follows: 

Full membership

• €1 000 (about R20 000) annually
• Two representatives
• Training seats for registered representatives 
• Delegate places at the TAPA EMEA Africa regional conference for registered representatives 
• TAPA EMEA member-section access
• Access to the association’s TIS tool 

Security Service Provider membership

• €2 000 (about R40 000) annually
• One representative
• Training seat for registered representative 
• Delegate place at the TAPA EMEA Africa regional conference for registered representative 
• TAPA EMEA member-section access
• Access to the association’s TIS tool 

“This is an update to the 50% membership discount we have offered to companies in South Africa for the past eight years or more. It also opens up subregional Africa membership to companies across the whole of Africa,” Carelle points out. “We hope this opportunity will enable us to obtain not only new members in Africa but, consequently, more risk intelligence, cargo crime data and information from across the African continent, as well as more companies adopting our supply chain security standards.” 

Hopefully, these security standards can help to fight crime across the continent and curb the wave threatening to engulf supply chains. 

* TAPA EMEA is a not-for-profit industry association that helps manufacturers, shippers, and their logistics service providers to minimise supply chain losses resulting from cargo thefts.