Shoplifters cost the region's firms £169m

Thieves operating throughout the West Midlands have cost firms a staggering £169 million in the past year, it emerged today.

Products such as packaged meat, cheese, shaving products and lip gloss are particularly favoured because they are easy to pocket and can be sold within minutes of being pilfered.

Experts have been told by shoplifters that they can offload goods by simply carrying out "door-to-door" sales or by touting them in local pubs. Some are even stealing to order.

Figures provided to the Express & Star show shoplifters cost businesses in the region £88.2m last year while theft from their own employees cost them a further £60.8m.

Professor Joshua Bamfield, director of the Centre for Retail Research, said:

"We interview thieves and talk to them about how they get rid of their stuff

"Typically, thieves take the kind of things they can get rid of within two to three minutes of picking them up.

"Shoplifters know providing they don't get too greedy, there's so much they can get away with.

"We'd like to see tougher penalties for those who steal.

"Retailers need to also pay a lot more attention to this kind of activity because as they are aware, profit at this moment in time is difficult to come by."

Last week a serial shoplifter from Bloxwich who went on a crime spree at Co-op stores was given a suspended prison term.

Shaun Moore, 32, of Marlborough Street, targeted stores in Willenhall and Wednesfield and in one case took 20 tins of salmon.

And at the start of the month, Layton Griffiths, 24, of High Street, Bilston, admitted stealing £42.64 worth of goods including Nescafe coffee, Lynx body spray and lager from the Uplands Store in Wolverhampton. He was jailed for 14 weeks.

Last month, it emerged that shoplifters had stolen more than £360,000 worth of goods from Dudley's Merry Hill Shopping Centre, Wolverhampton's Mander Centre and the Bullring in Birmingham, striking 2,169 times between April 2010 and the end of September.

Of the three centres, Merry Hill was the worst-hit, reporting 1,045 thefts.

It is estimated that between 50 and 60 per cent of beat officers' time is taken up with retail crime.

Celebrity chef Antony Worrall Thompson issued an apology last week after stealing cheese and wine from a branch of Tesco.

The 60-year-old Ready Steady Cook star was arrested by police and given a caution after he was caught stealing from a branch of the supermarket in Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire, while using a self-scanning till.