Cheese thievery on the upsurge

Monday, February 20, 2012

Thieves have a hankering for cheese and they're not saying "please" when they take it either.

According to a 2011 survey of 1,187 large retailers in 43 countries by the Centre for Retail Research in Britain, cheese is one of the staples, along with fresh meat, that were stolen or lost (sometimes it is hard to tell the difference) at rates far higher than the overall average for the grocery industry.

The centre's Global Retail Theft Barometer found that 3.1 per cent of the cheese produced worldwide annually is stolen, while for fresh meat, candy and chocolates it's 2.7 per cent. Shrink, or retailers' losses from shoplifting, employee theft and administrative errors, cost the industry $119 billion in 2011 or 1.45 per cent of sales. That global shrink rate is 6.6 per cent higher than in 2010 and represents the highest percentage recorded by the survey since it began in 2007.

"The ongoing economic uncertainty in all geographic areas and industries continues to have a deleterious impact on shrink for retailers and their suppliers," the survey summary says.

Customer theft, including shoplifting and organized retail crime, was up 13.4 per cent over 2010, costing retailers $51.5 billion or 43.2 per cent of the total shrinkage number.

Countries with the highest shrink rates were India, Russia and Morocco. On the other end of the scale, Japan, Hong Kong and Taiwan had the lowest shrink rates. The report didn't mention Canada. BF