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Plastics recycler fined over stolen bakery equipment

The owner of a Shropshire plastics recycling site has been ordered to pay £6,438.45 after a ‘substantial’ amount of stolen bakery equipment was tracked to the site.

Last week (31 August), bakery equipment company, Bakers Basco, announced it had won a ‘major victory’ against criminals who steal its bread baskets and dollies (wheeled trolleys for moving the baskets around).

plastics
Bakers Basco’s baskets and dollies

After reports of equipment being stolen from various customers in and around Birmingham, the company deployed GPS-equipped decoy items to track the missing equipment.

Equipment

According to the company, on two separate occasions, its equipment was removed without permission, and was then tracked via a recycling unit in the Midlands, before ending up at a plastics recycler west of the Midlands.

Bakers Basco attended the site accompanied by police, where they discovered “a substantial amount of equipment, worth thousands of pounds.” Further visits recovered yet more equipment in Birmingham.

According to the company, the owner of the plastics recycling site – which has not been named – was served with appropriate documentation and a charge for the location and recovery of the equipment.

Judgement

After failing to respond, matters were escalated and culminated in a county court judgment for £6,438.45, representing the original claimed damages plus interest and court costs.

Bakers Basco said its team is now working with different police forces to pursue the various people involved in stealing the company’s property through the courts.

Steve Millward, general manager, Bakers Basco, said: “Usually, when our equipment go missing, it’s because someone, like a small baker or retailer, has ‘borrowed’ it without permission. In this case, the defendants were stealing our equipment and recycling them for the value of the raw materials.”

Mr Millward added: “When people steal it like this, the bakeries that pay to license our equipment, the retailers that sell their loaves and the shoppers who rely on them for their daily bread all end up paying extra for the actions of a small number of greedy criminals.”

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