Four Reasons Electronic Seals Fail in Real-World Applications

Many in the industry understand that physical seals alone are insufficient, and human error is the biggest reason for continued cargo security failures. However, there’s a reason why no electronic seal on the market has been widely adopted. The truth is that most solutions we’ve seen use outdated technology and cumbersome solutions that create as many problems as they solve in real-world applications. Let’s break down the four most common reasons electronic seals fail in real-world applications:

1. Reusable products create a whole new supply chain.

Electronics are expensive, especially over the last few years, with global supply chain delays and price-gauging. Most manufacturers make reusable products instead, which is great in theory. In reality, this generates a whole supply chain within the supply chain for packaging, shipping, checking, and holding seals from application to application. No company wants to invest time or funding in implementing a whole new process.

2. Disposable batteries have limits.

The life of a container is roughly 15 years. The shelf life of a disposable battery is anywhere from 3-6 years. Picture a company with 40k containers. They install their electronic seals, usually using damaging techniques like drilling, and a few years later, they are faced with disassembling 40k active units dispersed throughout their global supply chain and replacing the batteries. This enormous task requires extensive staffing, training, planning, shipping, and taking containers out of commission for extended periods. It’s unrealistic for a company to take this on.

3. Solar has drawbacks.

Realizing that changing batteries is not an option, many seal manufacturers release electronic seal designs using solar. Solar technology is great but has yet to be fully developed. Rechargeable solar batteries lose capacity, and panels lose efficiency over time. To account for reductions in efficiency, manufacturers will design their electronic seals with higher-end solar panels and batteries. Not only are visible solar panels vulnerable to vandalism, but the more expensive the panel, the more potential for theft.

4. Installation can damage equipment.

A shipping container’s life span is upwards of 15 years. Companies testing electronic seals can’t be expected to damage their cargo by drilling multiple holes into the container or removing whole chunks of steel. Installation must be streamlined and quick to avoid taking containers out of commission, rerouting containers, or causing shipping delays.

We spend weeks on the ground each year traveling along client container routes, working with personnel, and analyzing supply chain data. We know that the only way for electronic seals to be accepted by the market is to account for real-world scenarios.

20+ years ago, I started representing seal manufacturers in Eastern Europe. You can imagine that with so much political chaos after the fall of the USSR, they were dealing with constant issues with theft, smuggling, and contraband. I got involved in a special initiative to prevent smuggling, theft, and contraband by implementing border checks, weigh stations, and other security initiatives at the point of entry and exit of countries in the region.

To give you a characteristically Eastern European example of what we were dealing with, imagine a single 40-foot container of cigarettes. The duty fees on that container alone would have been half a million dollars. Obviously, there was a lot of pressure on the side of customs to ensure that shipment remained secure and duty fees were paid, and a lot of incentive on the other side to do the opposite. Now, we’re following the path of this container. It gets checked upon entry to the country, weighed, and sealed. A day or two later, it’s leaving the country, the weight matches up, and customs opens the same seal to check the cargo. Inside are bags of potatoes weighing the same amount as the cigarettes should have, and the seal shows no evidence of tampering.

There’s only one way this could have happened, so I gathered a team to start testing seals from the manufacturers I represented and some of the most reputable and seemingly secure seals on the market. Every seal we tested could be tampered with and re-sealed without evidence using simple and highly available tools in seconds.

I alerted the seal manufacturers I represented, assuming they would immediately start re-engineering their products. They were unwilling to update their products, claiming they’ve been doing business the same way for 120 years. I answered that “seal technology is not wine or cheese. It doesn’t get better with age,” and gathered a team of 8 esteemed engineers to redesign the cargo security seal as we know it.

Redflag was born because the seals on the market did not provide a reliable way to prevent or detect tampering. It’s 2024, and we have innovated, iterated, and integrated our technology at each step. Twenty years later, we still produce tamper-resistant and tamper-evident seals as part of a complete cargo security solution. Except now, with theft, smuggling, trafficking, and contraband more prolific in the Americas than in post-soviet Eastern Europe, the world has no choice but to tune in. – Gregory Kleynerman, Founder & CEO

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