How Tamper Evident Labels Cut Cargo Theft Claims by 63% at the Port of Rotterdam

All cargo thefts carry a considerable impact on the victim companies, usually financial and reputational costs. But when pharmaceutical supply chains are targeted, the consequences can run much deeper. 

The Port of Rotterdam handles 14.5 million cargo containers (or TEUs) annually, yet a single tampered pallet can trigger a six-figure insurance claim, delay an entire vessel, and erode customer trust overnight. In Q1 2025, a mid-sized 3PL operating between Rotterdam and Felixstowe slashed cargo-theft claims by 63 %—not with armed guards or GPS bolts, but with a €0.18 tamper-evident security label applied at the pallet level.

Over the last two years, the TAPA EMEA Intelligence System (TIS) has recorded 118 thefts of pharmaceuticals in 30 countries across EMEA. Most have not shared their loss value, but known high-value cases over this period have also included:

• €3,000,000 – pharma thefts from an Origin Facility in Lancenigo, Italy
• €2,000,000 – theft from an Origin Facility in Bologna, Italy 
• €1,400,000 – loss from a facility in Naples, Italy
• €1,241,034 – theft from a facility in Irkutsk, Russia
• €400,000 – pharmaceuticals stolen from a trailer in Castle Donnington, United Kingdom  
• €300,000 – products taken from a Services 3^rd Party Facility in Ancona, Italy

Reflecting another well-known fact that cargo criminals rarely take a day off, this latest high profile pharma theft in France took place on Easter Sunday. 

This is the story of how a deceptively simple sticker became the linchpin of a €2.4 million risk-reduction programme.

The Silent Epidemic at Europe’s Busiest Gateway

Rotterdam’s 42 km of quayside are a thief’s paradise: stacked containers, fleeting crane cycles, and 30-minute truck turnarounds. Customs data logged 412 “seal anomalies” in 2024 alone—industry code for someone opened it and hoped nobody noticed.

Insurers paid out €18.7 million in contested cargo claims across the ARA hub last year, with 68 % linked to undetected mid-transit tampering.

In October 2024, forwarder BlueWave Logistics rolled out a 100 × 150 mm tamper-evident label on every outbound pallet of consumer electronics, pharmaceuticals, and luxury apparel. The label—branded SecureGrid-ULTRA—uses a dual-layer PET film engineered to fracture into an irreversible chequerboard pattern when lifted more than 3 mm.

Key specs that matter to logistics pros:

The Pilot: 1,200 Pallets, Zero Successful Reseals

BlueWave tracked 1,200 pallets from Rotterdam’s ECT Delta terminal to UK consolidation centres. Each pallet received two labels—one on the top face under stretch wrap, one on the side seam overlapping the wrap edge.

Real-time monitoring came via a mobile app that photographed the DataMatrix code at five checkpoints:

1. Pallet build (warehouse)
2. Container stuffing (quayside)
3. Gate-out scan (terminal)
4. Arrival scan (Felixstowe)
5. Final mile receipt (DC)

Result: 100 % of deliberate tamper attempts produced a visible chequerboard. Zero reseals passed visual inspection. Insurance claims plummeted from 11 per quarter to 4—all unrelated to mid-transit theft.

“The label doesn’t stop the thief—it indicts them in 4K,” says BlueWave’s Risk Director, Marta van der Berg. “Dock supervisors now reject any pallet with a partial grid before it even leaves the stack.”

ROI by the Numbers