Retailers are investing billions to combat theft. But are they overlooking one of the biggest opportunities to protect profit — their own distribution centres?
UK retailers cannot afford to ignore shrink. Yet while shoplifting dominates the headlines, a significant proportion of retail theft happens much further up the supply chain.
Research by Retail Economics and Thruvision estimated that employee theft from UK retail distribution centres cost retailers around £1.4 billion in 2023. That is stock disappearing before it reaches the shop floor — directly undermining margins in an industry where every penny counts.
The question is not whether retailers can afford to invest in distribution-centre security. It is whether they can afford not to.
Traditional exit checks have a fundamental weakness: capacity. Random screening may leave most employees unchecked, while manual searches can create queues and disrupt shift changes. Metal-detection wands also cannot detect non-metallic items.
For anyone intent on stealing, those gaps create opportunity.
Thruvision changes the economics of screening.
Its WalkTHRU technology enables retailers to screen employees as they leave distribution centres, detecting concealed metallic and non-metallic items without physical contact. Systems can screen up to 1,800 people per hour, making high-throughput screening a practical option for busy sites.
The commercial case is compelling. Thruvision customers report potential return on investment in six months or less. And randomised employee screening has been shown to reduce insider theft by up to 80%.
These are not simply security metrics. They represent an opportunity to recover lost margin, strengthen deterrence and make better use of existing loss-prevention resources.
For retailers, the next step is straightforward: stop treating distribution-centre screening as an operational overhead and start measuring it as an investment in profit protection.
Thruvision works with customers to assess their security processes, identify vulnerabilities and build a business case around their own operating conditions and loss data.
With margins under pressure, the biggest opportunity may not be to spend more fighting theft — but to close the gaps that allow it to happen.
Thruvision: See the Unseen. Protect the Profit.
