Fewer incidents but persistently high economic losses: this is the picture that emerges from the monthly report published by the Tapa Emea Intelligence System, the data collection platform of the Transported Asset Protection Association focused on Europe, the Middle East and Africa. In May 2025, the organisation recorded 341 cargo thefts across thirty countries, a sharp drop compared to the 936 incidents reported in May 2024. This significant decrease, however, has not been enough to reduce the overall financial impact of the phenomenon, which continues to amount to several million euros per month.
Of the 341 cases reported, only 71 could be quantified in terms of financial damage, with total losses exceeding six million euros. The average daily financial loss recorded in the Tapa database stands at around 192,573 euros, a sign that criminals continue to target high-value goods, often vulnerable due to weak surveillance. Among the most serious incidents in May were the theft of goods worth two million euros from a semi-trailer in Laon, France, on 16 May, and another theft on 5 May in Haifa, Israel, where items valued at approximately 1.96 million euros were stolen.
In geographical terms, Germany remained the country with the highest number of incidents (69), followed closely by Italy (62). The United Kingdom (38), Spain (35), the Netherlands (20), South Africa (19), France (18) and Greece (12) followed. In Germany, motorway rest areas continued to prove vulnerable, with several lorries targeted over just a few days. Between 5 and 8 May alone, in Bavaria, electronics and automotive parts worth over 300,000 euros were stolen, with three thefts reported in Schmidgaden, Lindenlohe and Lindenholzhausen. Italy also confirmed a worrying trend, with 62 cases recorded in a single month, particularly in areas lacking structured checks and active security systems at loading and parking sites.
One of the most concerning developments identified by Tapa is the growing use of digital fraud techniques, which are increasingly supplementing traditional physical theft. According to Fenadismer, the Spanish federation of haulage companies, there is a rising number of cases in which criminals pose as authorised carriers, successfully collecting goods directly from loading points without triggering immediate suspicion.
These schemes often involve hacking into corporate email systems, creating fake email addresses that closely resemble legitimate ones, or forging transport documents. According to Tapa, such tactics were used in around 1.5% of reported thefts in Europe. These incidents are particularly insidious, as the theft is often only discovered days later, when the sender realises that the shipment never reached its destination.
