OUR INVESTIGATIONS

Bread basket theft (or conversion) is the Achilles’ heel of the baking industry. It’s an issue that has plagued bakers for many years - with typical losses in excess of 60% and, in extreme cases, in excess of 100%. 

Bakers Basco equipment carries embossed warnings and is clearly marked as the company’s property. Unfortunately, our baskets and dollies are so well designed that people ‘borrow’ them and use them for a whole range of purposes other than carrying bread. There have been cases where businesses have got hold of dozens, hundreds or even thousands of our baskets/dollies and won’t give them back when we ask. 

However, every year, several million pounds’ worth of equipment, meant purely for the safe transport of bakery products, is misappropriated by third parties who have no contractual relationship with Bakers Basco Ltd. Often, equipment is converted for other purposes, which causes damage or makes it unusable for safely transporting bread, or, as with many recent cases, ‘chipped’ and reduced to raw material for resale by waste management companies and recycling scrap yards. As a result, bakers, shops and consumers all end up paying more than they need to. 

That’s why we have a dedicated national asset investigations team who locate misappropriated equipment and use negotiation, education, collection and, where necessary, legal enforcement to reclaim our assets and recover financial losses. To date, the division has undertaken just short of 62,000 investigations and recovered over two million Omega baskets and wheels.