Stolen plant worth over £40k recovered at Dover docks

On Wednesday 10th November 2010, five items of stolen plant and agricultural equipment, and parts from a stolen Volkswagen worth over £40k were recovered on the back of a lorry at Dover Port.   Officers from the Metropolitan Police's Plant & Agricultural National Intelligence Unit (PANIU) were notified of the theft of a compressor by TRACKER and, anticipating it would be travelling into Europe, they made their way to the Port of Dover.

Working with DC Simon Griggs of AVCIS and Kent Police Commercial Vehicle Unit, the Officers picked up a TRACKER signal being emitted from the compressor. The lorry hiding the items was located within the shipping lanes just before it boarded a ferry. One male was arrested. 

DC James Elliott from the Plant & Agricultural National Intelligence Unit (PANIU) said, “We were lucky that one of the stolen items had a TRACKER fitted, otherwise I feel the equipment would have slipped through the net and would now be in Europe. The item with the TRACKER unit was stolen from the Bristol area, but Plant and Agricultural Crime is a national problem and one the Met police, along with its partners, is working hard to combat. Without the forethought of one of the owners fitting a TRACKER these items would have most probably been another un-recovered statistic.”

 Adrian Davenport, Police Liaison Officer for TRACKER said, “TRACKER works very closely with the Plant & Agricultural National Intelligence Unit (PANIU) and this recovery illustrates the success of the partnership. Every year, in the UK alone, an estimated £50 million to £70 million worth of plant and agricultural machinery is stolen but only five percent is ever recovered*.  Between June 2009 and July 2010 TRACKER recovered over £3.5 million worth of stolen plant and farming equipment in the UK.

“Our partnership with the Plant & Agricultural National Intelligence Unit plays an instrumental role in cracking down on plant and agriculture theft, therefore providing vital protection to businesses’ assets. In addition, because TRACKER’s technology uses Very High Frequency (VHF), it means the signal is extremely difficult to jam.”