The Agricultural Engineers Association (AEA) formally adopted the CESAR® scheme as its official security and registration scheme in November 2009. Roger Lane-Nott, Chief Executive of the AEA, signed an agreement between the AEA and the Construction Equipment Association (who own the CESAR trade mark), represented by Yvette Henshall-Bell of JCB, during the fifth annual Construction Industry Thefts Solution conference held at JCB’s world headquarters at Rocester, Staffordshire.
Originally established, in February 2007, to safeguard construction equipment CESAR® is supported by many major machinery manufacturers including Manitou, Merlo, Bobcat, Hanix, Doosan and JCB who fit CESAR to all the machines they supply in the UK and which in the case of Merlo and Manitou already includes machines sold into agriculture. JCB also now fits CESAR® to the machines it sells into agriculture in the UK, including the Fastrac, whilst McCormick and Landini mark all units sold and more recently John Deere are factory fitting on tractors supplied from Germany.
Over 25,000 machines are registered on the scheme and the triangular registration plate is now a familiar sight in construction and is rapidly appearing on agricultural equipment as the scheme is adopted by more companies as a factory fitment and as more farmers chose to have CESAR fitted to existing units.
Roger Lane-Nott, Chief Executive of the AEA, had this to say at the announcement..”The CESAR scheme gives the agricultural industry and the police the upper hand in fighting organised criminals that target agricultural equipment. CESAR® is a powerful deterrent against machinery theft and it gives farmers, contractors and the police ‘state of the art’ identification technology that significantly increases the chances of identification and recovery in the event of theft. I’m delighted to announce that the AEA is getting behind the scheme as organised and opportunistic equipment theft is a real issue in the agricultural market and it’s not acceptable, in this day and age, to have criminals targeting hard working farmers and their families”.
Statistics issued by the ‘Met’ Police show that a machine without CESAR is 4 times more likely to be stolen than a registered machines. The recovery rate for ‘unregistered plant’ is as low as 5% but the recovery rate for stolen CESAR machines has increased to nearly 30% in 2009, 6 times that for ‘unregistered’ plant.
In agriculture Telescopic Handlers and higher horse power agricultural tractors are common targets for theft, but a wide range of equipment goes missing each year. Industry insiders reckon machinery theft to be as high as £600 million per year from the UK with the trend rising in the current economic climate.
As well as adopting the CESAR scheme the AEA has also announced that it is liaising with the ‘Plant and Agricultural National Intelligence Unit’ (PANIU) to aid the recovery of stolen agricultural equipment. The specialist unit is responsible for ‘national intelligence’ and for co-ordinating activities between the various UK police constabularies. PANIU also liaises with foreign police bureaus to track stolen equipment from the UK, establish its true identity and repatriate it.
The Plant and Agricultural National Intelligence Unit is also financially supported by six leading insurance companies (Allianz, HSB Engineering Insurance Ltd, Aviva, Royal & Sun Alliance, Zurich and NFU Mutual).
As a final benefit to farmers insurance premium discounts are available from leading insurers for machines fitted with CESAR which offsets the cost of fitting the system to existing machines.
For more information go to www.cesarscheme.org
