Goods travelling in containers are secured with bolt seals at origin. If the seal is still intact when it arrives at destination, a customer can usually be satisfied that the goods inside the container have not been tampered with or stolen.
However, this is no longer the case.
Clever fraudsters are taking advantage of the latest 3D printing technology which allows for replica seals to be created in less than ten minutes. The fake seals are being printed with matching identification numbers making it near on impossible to detect.
In recent weeks a pharmaceutical company found large amounts of cargo missing from a container even though the seal appeared to be intact. On closer inspection the seal was confirmed as a fake.
Shippers sending valuable cargo overseas are being advised to use new security seals which cannot be cloned.