Famous sweet thefts from lorries

A bag of sweets costs a few pounds. A lorry full of them is worth tens of thousands, and unlike phones or televisions, sweets have no serial numbers. Once they are unloaded and sold on, nobody can prove where they came from. That simple fact explains why sweets and chocolate keep turning up in the crime pages.

Skelmersdale, 2004: six trailers of chocolate

In the early hours of a Sunday in October 2004, a gang raided the Great Bear distribution centre in Skelmersdale, Lancashire. According to NBC News, reporting on 4 October, at least five men held two guards in a field while six trailer loads of chocolate were driven away, worth more than 900,000 US dollars. Five trailers were found later, four of them empty and one still full of Easter eggs.

Adlington, 2009: the raid that turned sour

On 25 September 2009 a gang of up to four men tried to steal two 40 foot trailers of Swizzels Matlow sweets, including Drumsticks, Monster Mix and Double Dippers, at Adlington, between Macclesfield and Poynton. The alarm was raised while they were attaching lorry cabs to the trailers, and they fled before they could finish the job. Two men were later arrested and bailed, and a 55 year old security guard was treated in hospital for minor injuries. Nigel Wanford, a supply chain manager, told the Macclesfield Express that you cannot track sweets like TVs or mobile phones: they are low value but easy to get rid of.

Bad Hersfeld, 2013: the Nutella trailer

Thieves took about 5 tonnes of Nutella from a parked trailer in Bad Hersfeld, Germany, worth about €16,000. The full story is in the Nutella heist.

Telford, 2023: the Creme Egg thief

A man used a stolen lorry cab to take a trailer holding nearly 200,000 Creme Eggs from an industrial unit in Telford. The load was driven onto the M42, where he surrendered by walking towards police with his hands up. He was jailed for 18 months. Read the great Creme Egg robbery.

Italy to Poland, 2026: the KitKat lorry

A lorry carrying about 12 tonnes of KitKats, some 413,793 bars shaped like Formula 1 cars, vanished between Nestlé's Italian factory and Poland. See the twelve tonne KitKat theft.

Quebec, 2011 and 2012: the biggest of them all

Nearly 3,000 tonnes of maple syrup, worth C$18.7 million, were siphoned out of a strategic reserve and replaced with water. It is still the benchmark for sweet crime: the great maple syrup heist.

The lesson

Every one of these stories raised a smile, but the businesses involved lost real money, and security guards were put at risk. For lighter tales from the sweet world, try funny sweet stories from the news.

Download as PDF