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Proven TydenBrooks Methods to Protect Food and Beverage Producers from Cargo Theft

The manufacturing, packaging, and distribution of food and beverage products is one of the largest and multifaceted industries in the world. The food and beverages market consists of producers that manufacturer beverages, fresh and packaged foods, pet food, and tobacco products which are distributed by organizations, sole traders, or through global partnerships. Whether you work with seafood, strudel, spices, or soda, you face different risks and challenges than other types of manufacturing companies. From the raw goods stage through processing, packaging, and distribution, your operations and supply chain counts on a variety of systems, people, and safety and security practices.

The global food and beverages market reached a value of nearly $5,943.6 billion in 2019, having increased at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 5.7% since 2015. The market is expected to reach $7,525.7 billion in 2023 and to $8,638.2 billion by 2025. Unsurprisingly, the food and beverage industry is also at the top of the list when it comes to industries affected by theft, pilferage, and contamination. This is due to the fact that criminal entities or enterprises can quickly re-sell food and beverage products stolen from a shipment. In many cases, these products are more often than not, untraceable or if the goods are recovered, they cannot be resold to the public, leading to food waste.

As a result, to protect producers, distributors, and the general public, TydenBrooks has proven end-to-end security solutions food and beverage manufacturers can implement today to protect their supply chains.

Make Your Cargo a Hard Target

Unquestionably, it is in the interest of every company to transform themselves into a hard target by actively removing their shipments from the focus of cargo criminals. With today’s myriad of supply chain issues, inflationary pressures, and the rising level of cargo theft, its critical to learn what not do, as it is to learn what to do. So, the basic premise for making a shipment hard to steal is to prevent pilferage, damage, and in many cases as we see today, complete loss of the loaded trailer or container. By raising situational awareness and collaborating with company stakeholders to create cargo security policy based on direct feedback from the field, claims, brand integrity, ultimately the company’s bottom line is protected making way for continued expansion.

However, raising cargo security awareness across one’s operations is usually not enough. Regular cargo security training and national threat updates from cargo crime analysts such as Sensitech or CargoNet are critical. Today’s companies also need to stay ahead of cargo criminals and leverage technology security solutions to safely deliver their goods to consumers, but also to protect their employees. Additionally, cargo that is inaccessible to criminals is not a potential target for them. Therefore, the more difficult or more complicated access to a shipment is, the less likely a container or truck is to become a victim of cargo theft. Avoid the obvious areas that most attacks take place like truck stops, and do not let freight sit idle in unsecure yards or be in areas with unsecured parking.

Implement a TydenBrooks Multi-Layered Cargo Security Strategy

To create and implement a successful multi-layered security strategy requires many years of proven techniques. TydenBrooks has over 149 years of experience and knowledge when it comes to what security seals and cargo security solutions are best for your industry. Daily, we work hand in hand with the food and beverage industry creating custom solutions to their specific needs. Fundamentally, the best approach is to create an end-to-end process that identifies your vulnerabilities so you can implement preventative indicative and barrier security measures at each junction. This is a company-wide team effort and should also include your suppliers.

During the transport of products throughout one’s supply chain, it’s also important to continually audit and evaluate the full chain of custody to mitigate vulnerabilities. Security measures should make it as difficult as possible for a criminal to pilferage or acquire goods and products. The first step is to start with indicative security seals.

Indicative Seals

These type of security seals are designed to be a deterrent and provide visual evidence of or to “indicate” tampering. Indicative security seals can either be fixed in length or adjustable. The most widely supplied indicative security seal on the market for domestic trucking or (TOFC) “trailer on flatcar” is our Plastic Truck Seal. Fixed length seals are frequently used to secure transport truck latches to provide evidence that the truck or container door has been opened. It also provides chain-of-custody security with its consecutive numbering, and a company name/logo. Additionally, as many companies in the food and beverage industry are integrating their TMS and ERP systems, our X-Strap Seal with its large flag for added marking options and bar coding is a top choice for the same application.

For food ingredients, Indicative wire, or adjustable plastic seal security seals such as the Tug Tight or Quick Loc 1.0 are widely used to secure Kraft drums of dry, paste, semi-liquid, or liquid products. Feeding both solutions through the lid apertures protect ingredients from pilferage and contamination. For super sack bulk bags our Ultra Strap Bag Seal firmly secures your ingredients from contamination. If you are shipping packaged food products, we suggest securing the cartons with our KTC VOID message security tape. When applied with a standard tape dispenser it becomes a covert layer of security to protect against the introduction of contraband and to identify pilferage at the package level.

Barrier Seals

Your next step is to create a “physical” barrier between your goods and the cargo criminal. Barrier security seals include cable and bolt seals and are generally considered high security seals. However, there are light and medium duty cable seals that have varying cable diameters, and some bolts are case hardened and require a specialized tool for bolt removal.

Medium and light duty cable seals are applied to shipments for cross country or state shipments that do not require the high security ISO certification. Yet, it’s now considered a best practice to go straight to an ISO 17712 certified seal to ensure maximum security. All high security barrier seals are required to have independent A2LA laboratory testing to confirm its ISO 17712 certification.

Cable security seals such as our FlexSecure line; FS15, FS35, FS50 are widely utilized by food and beverage companies due to our patented ball-bearing locking mechanism and non-preformed security cable that frays when cut to prevent reinsertion and to show evidence of tampering. Our patented locking mechanism makes it all but impossible to tamper with or capture the ball-bearing and also comes standard with high security laser marking.

Bolts seals, such as our Snaptracker and Intermodal II are designed for cross-border, high-value, high risk,  state-to-state rail and trailer shipments. They are also regularly utilized for international container shipments. All our bolt seals meet or exceed the ISO 17712 standard and require bolt cutters for removal. Marked by high security lasers the ability to customize the bolt seals with 1D, 2D, and QR barcodes allows for unique company identifiers. This ensures their authenticity and chain-of-custody tracking. Our VuBolt seal offers an option to color mix the bolt and the lock body which increases security by preventing 3D printing duplications.

Connected “active” Tracking & Monitoring

It’s now critical for food and beverage companies to achieve the greatest possible levels of visibility in order to anticipate challenges and delays before they occur and to best manage them when they are unavoidable. So, your final step is to implement our connected “active” tracking and monitoring technology solutions.

However, to meet the demands of today’s global supply chain an end-to-end real-time security solution requires a standalone device or a combination of a reusable sensor device that creates an expanded sensor network. Implemented, and paired with performance management metrics companies can increase revenue, improve sustainability, enhance partner relations, and most importantly mitigate cargo theft.

Designed for use in supply chain and asset monitoring applications our TB-HGR4 or TB-HGD4 advanced tracking and monitoring solutions provide your operations with the ability to report location, temperature, humidity, light, movement, and shock levels in real-time. These “active” devices can be embedded into the freight including cartons to provide instant visibility when an attack is attempted at the case level.

TydenBrooks’ TB-HGR4 unit is rechargeable via Qi wireless charging and offers 40 days reporting at 1-hour {stationary); 15 min {in motion), and 10 sec sensor monitoring (assumes 8hrs of motion per day). The popular TB-HGD4 is a non-rechargeable connected device which lasts up to 60 days. Both are available for use as a standalone device or in combination with our BLE Tyden Tags creating an expanded sensor network.

Leading the Way, Securing the World

Approaching our 150th year in March 2023, TydenBrooks continues to innovate and expand our full line of security seals and connected GPS devices and tags to identify tampering and mitigate theft of your goods in transit. We offer uniquely designed security products and solutions to fit any industry application and protect your cargo anywhere on the globe.

For a free layered security consultation from our team of industry experts, please contact us at [email protected]. Order online at www.tydenbrooks.com or contact our customer service team @ 1-800-458-7235 (SEAL).

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