Basket case ends in court... again

A MIDLAND sandwich firm has been fined for using another business’s baskets to carry their products.

Wolverhampton’s Authentic Bite Ltd last year landed in legal hot water for doing the very same thing to the same company, bread industry basket and dolly providers, Bakers Basco.

At Walsall County Court, the firm was ordered to pay costs and damages of £6,000 and made the subject of a restraining order. This adds to the £8,700 awarded for two previous incidents.

The most recent case underlined the blight of pilfered baskets endured by London-based Bakers Basco and the industry as a whole.

It has become the bane of Basco’s operation and the business has now revealed the strange uses its equipment has been put to.

The list is topped by a zoo’s makeshift monkey bridge but also includes lobster pots, bed frames, sheep feeders and even mobile plinths for mannequins.

Basco has now introduced GPS technology to track down its missing trolleys.

In July 2016 Authentic Bite made a formal undertaking not to use Basco’s baskets and dollies without permission.

The case saw Basco introduce evidence from GPS tracking technology, including an aerial satellite plot showing its equipment being moved around the defendant’s premises over a 24-day period from the production to the loading area.

At the hearing, His Honour Judge Mithani considered evidence relating to multiple breaches of Authentic Bite’s undertaking.

After the case, Steve Millward, general manager of Bakers Basco, said: “We have no intention of allowing people to repeatedly take our equipment without consent.

“In instances like this, we will pursue the matter through the courts. It would have been a lot cheaper for Authentic Bite if they had just bought their own baskets.

“If people use our equipment without permission, that’s a kind of theft, in our eyes.

“And anyone who says it’s a ‘victimless crime’ couldn’t be more wrong – the bakeries that pay to license our equipment, the retailers that sell their products and the shoppers who rely on them for their daily bread all end up paying extra for the actions of a small number of thoughtless, selfish, greedy people.”

He added: “People who think it’s OK to ‘borrow’ them without asking don’t usually pay attention to basic health and safety rules,” he explains.

“They will use our dollies for purposes never designed for.

“Used properly in a factory setting or in transit from baker to retailer, they’re designed to be ultra-safe.

“But people who don’t care about the rules, use them in the wrong way and frequently create trip or topple hazards, or other health and safety issues.” baskets and they were