Key figures:
- 40,587 reports entered the TAPA EMEA system in September, including 39,613 from South Africa.
- Financial data was available for only 220 cases, or 0.5% of all reports.
- Documented losses totalled €24.76 million across the incidents with known financial values.
- The average loss in a case with a known value was €112,559.
- Fifty incidents involved losses of more than €100,000, with an average loss of €439,336.
- One robbery in Italy resulted in the theft of a cocoa shipment worth €6 million.
- Germany recorded the most incidents among European countries, with 202 reports, followed by Italy with 103, France with 84 and Spain with 75. Poland recorded four incidents.
The latest Cargo Crime Monitor from the Transported Asset Protection Association (TAPA EMEA) highlights the need for caution when interpreting official cargo crime figures. TAPA recorded €24,763,017 in documented losses in September, but financial details were available for only 220 incidents—0.5% of all reports in its system. The average loss among those cases was €112,559, while documented losses averaged €825,433 per day.
The most serious incidents resulted in significantly higher losses. TAPA recorded 50 cases involving losses of at least €100,000, with the average loss in this group reaching €439,336.
Another 24 incidents involved losses of between €50,000 and €100,000. Together, they accounted for more than €1.48 million in losses.
Compared with July, the average loss per case with a known value rose from roughly €94,500 to more than €112,500—an increase of about 19%. Total documented losses also increased by around 10%, even though fewer incidents included a stated value: 220 in September, compared with 238 in July.
A €6 million robbery in Italy
The most costly incident reported in September took place in Italy. On 16 September, a truck carrying cocoa to Turkey was robbed, with the loss estimated at €6 million. That was twice the value of TAPA’s largest single loss in July, when a theft at a facility in Hungary was assessed at €3 million.
The case shows how a single successful attack on a high-value shipment can result in a substantial financial loss.
Germany led Europe in reported incidents
Germany recorded the highest number of September incidents among European countries, with 202 reports.
The next highest totals were:
- Italy – 103 reports,
- France – 84,
- Spain – 75,
- the United Kingdom – 49,
- Sweden – 40,
- Switzerland – 24,
- Austria – 15.
TAPA recorded four incidents in Poland during September.
Report volumes should not be treated as a direct measure of risk in each country. The figures also reflect the size of the transport market and differences in how frequently incidents are reported.
Why did the report contain more than 40,000 reports?
TAPA’s September report covered 40,587 incidents across the EMEA region. That unusually high total does not necessarily indicate a sudden surge in crime on European roads. It was overwhelmingly driven by data from South Africa, which accounted for 39,613 reports. As a result, September’s total should not be compared directly with previous months without taking into account the change in the composition of the reported data.
The same factor affects the breakdown by offenders’ methods. Across the full dataset, 69.5% of incidents for which a modus operandi was identified involved violence or the threat of violence. This percentage should not be taken as representative of European road transport, because it is heavily influenced by the large number of reports from South Africa.
The €24.76 million represents only part of the real loss
The clearest message from the September data is how much financial information is missing. Loss values were provided for only 0.5% of reports. For the remaining 99.5%, TAPA does not state the value of the goods or the resulting loss. The €24.76 million therefore does not represent the full cost of cargo theft across the EMEA supply chain. It covers only the cases for which a financial figure was submitted.
The figures also show how expensive individual incidents can be. The average loss among the 50 highest-value cases exceeded €439,000, while a single robbery resulted in a loss of €6 million. With financial data available for so few reports, the true cost of crime targeting European and international supply chains cannot be calculated precisely. TAPA’s September statistics nevertheless make one point clear: officially documented losses represent only a fraction of the wider problem.
