Nearly $650,000 worth of STIHL power equipment was stolen from a London, Ontario business, with police in Atlantic Canada later recovering a portion of the stolen goods hundreds of kilometres away. The scale of the theft — and how far the product travelled before recovery — highlights something logistics and distribution operators across Southern Ontario should be thinking hard about: once inventory leaves the building, it’s essentially gone unless there’s a clear video record of how, when, and by whom it left.

Why High-Value Product Is a Moving Target

Power tools, equipment, and packaged goods sitting in a distribution centre represent exactly the kind of portable, resellable inventory organized theft groups target. Unlike a single smash-and-grab, thefts at this scale usually involve either an overnight break-in with a vehicle staged nearby, or — increasingly, according to industry cargo theft data — inside knowledge of what’s in a facility and when it’s least protected.

That inside-knowledge angle matters. Recent industry analysis on cargo theft trends notes that facilities and warehouses have overtaken roads as a primary theft location in some regions, and that a meaningful share of thefts involve someone with access to inventory or scheduling information, not just outside intruders. For distribution hubs, that means camera coverage inside the facility — not just at the perimeter — is now part of a serious asset-protection strategy.

Building Coverage That Actually Tracks Product Movement

A distribution centre handling high-value goods needs camera placement that follows the product, not just the building’s exterior walls:

• Dock-door cameras that capture license plates and trailer numbers on every inbound and outbound load

• Aisle and rack cameras covering high-value SKU zones

• Overhead wide-angle coverage of staging areas where pallets sit before loading

• Entry/exit cameras at employee and visitor access points, tied to badge or access logs

Turning Footage Into a Chain-of-Custody Record

The real advantage of a properly built system isn’t catching a thief on camera after the fact — it’s having a searchable, time-stamped record that shows exactly which dock door, which shift, and which vehicle was involved when a discrepancy shows up in inventory counts. Paired with analytics that flag unusual after-hours movement or dwell time near high-value zones, this turns CCTV into a working part of loss-prevention operations rather than a box to check for insurance.

If your distribution centre is running on a patchwork of older cameras added over the years, ForceVision can help map out what a unified, full-coverage system would look like for your specific dock layout and inventory risk.

FAQ

Q: How common are thefts of this scale at Ontario distribution centres?
A: Large-loss incidents happen regularly enough that industry-wide cargo theft losses ran into the hundreds of millions of dollars across the US and Canada in recent quarters, making six-figure single-site losses far from rare.

Q: Does it matter if the goods were recovered elsewhere later?
A: Recovery doesn’t eliminate the operational cost — the facility still loses inventory, time, and often insurance leverage while goods are missing, which is why prevention and fast identification matter more than after-the-fact recovery.

Q: Can internal camera coverage help with insider theft, not just break-ins?
A: Yes — interior aisle and access-point cameras combined with access logs can identify irregular patterns, such as unauthorized after-hours entry to high-value storage zones.

Q: What’s the first step to improving distribution centre security?
A: A site walkthrough that maps current blind spots against where high-value inventory actually sits is usually the most useful starting point before adding or replacing cameras.