Stop loss

With Food and Beverages being the most popular target for cargo thieves, issues of supply chain security, ensured chain of custody, and protection of brand name is become an important issue for food and drink producers. Food and drinks surpassed electronics in 2010 as the most popular target of cargo thieves. Accounting for 21% of all cargo theft incidents reported, food and drinks were stolen in 185 theft incidents in 2010. Beverages, both alcoholic and non-alcoholic, have been the most stolen items associated with cargo theft in the food and beverage category.

As with other products, thieves have committed multi-trailer thefts of food and beverage products. In 2010, there were four thefts of alcohol cargo where nine trailers were stolen while food and non-alcoholic beverages had eight incidents resulting in 16 trailers stolen

Chain of Custody/ Product Integrity

Headline-making problems with food safety have turned the spotlight on supply chain practices in transport activities. Each year there are 76 million incidents of food poisoning, leading to 325,000 hospitalizations and 5,000 deaths, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. With the risks associated with loss of custody in the supply chain of food and beverage products leads companies to destroy many of these goods if they are recovered or if the cargo is breached.

With Food and Beverages being the most popular target for cargo thieves, issues of supply chain security, ensured chain of custody, and protection of brand name is become an important issue for food and drink producers. Food safety and traceability are not only in the news and on the minds of consumers; they are rapidly becoming strategic issues for all participants in the food supply chain. Strengthening the "chain of custody" related to food production is becoming the ante for successful participation in the industry.

Brand Protection

With brand creation and promotion comes the business consequence of the risk to the brand holder of negative media attention on incidents connected to their products. Companies and industry associations are putting more controls in place to manage risk to brand value. The fundamentals of the processes and systems sought by consumers, regulators, and the industry to achieve the risk mitigation in the transportation of food and beverages require that there is a verifiable and secure chain of custody.

The ability to understand, respond and cope with supply chain risks is essential to create a sustainable operation, brand and reputation. With the high amount of food and beverage products being stolen in cargo thefts and being resold to consumers, producers must also understand and respond to the risks associated with loss in the supply chain.

To ensure the chain of custody of a shipment, the GeoLokTM provides visibility into the movement and custody of a container as the container moves along it route, a record of its location and ownership is captured in real-time. Viewing the chain of custody in real-time allows companies to answer questions such as where is a container currently, where was it on a specific date, and most importantly, who had access to the container at what points in time.

The TrakLok Solution provides adopters with the ability to:

- verify and maintain security of the container;

- provide chain of custody verification in real-time;

- insure that containers have not been tampered with or accessed ;

TrakLok's technologies provide a time-definite and controlled chain of custody that will help adopters improve product integrity. TrakLogTM shipment monitoring enables improved product safety, ensuring product authenticity, and protection of a client's brand name.

Sources:

FreightWatch International. "FreightWatch Annual Report, US Cargo Theft: 2010." Austin, TX. February 18, 2011.

" 2010 Supply Chain ISAC Report of Cargo Theft Activity." Supply Chain Information Sharing and Analysis Center. SC-integrity, Inc. Forney, TX. 2011.

"2011 1st Quarter Supply Chain ISAC Report of Cargo Theft Activity." Supply Chain Information Sharing and Analysis Center. SC-integrity, Inc. Forney, TX. 2011.

Boyle, Robert D. "Tightening the food supply "chain of custody." Supply Chain Management Review. September 1, 2007.