Target Components suffers £300,000 warehouse break-in

Robbers bypassed three levels of security to breach distributor's warehouse over the weekend

Target Components' boss has praised staff and customers for their stoic reaction to a break-in over the weekend that saw more than £300,000 of stock taken.

Thieves bypassed three levels of security before breaching Target's warehouse and making off with several vanloads of servers, monitors, laptops and motherboards.

Talking to CRN, Target managing director Paul Cubbage said trading has returned to normal after staff spent yesterday counting stock.

Despite accepting only telephone orders, Target rang up £85,000 of orders yesterday, Cubbage (pictured below) said.

"There are two real positives to come out of this: our staff really pulled together and we experienced a huge amount of goodwill from our customers," he said.

"Our guys really mucked in and we had staff from nearly every department in the warehouse counting stock, trying to get to the point where we knew what we had and didn't have so we could start selling."

The thieves ripped a chunk from the side of Target's warhouse before making off with the equipment, including HP and Fujitsu servers, Cubbage said.

Tellingly, they left behind some high-value items, such as Intel Core i7 processors, suggesting they lacked a deep knowledge of IT.

"They mainly took the things that looked valuable but it was a professional job and they came well prepared," Cubbage said. "They were only able to get in because a third-party system failed."

Target's business, including its website, is now trading normally, Cubbage stressed, adding that the theft is being investigated by CID.