A unique partnership between Placemakers and Nelson Police will help tradies protect their tools from theft.
Police will be attending the annual Placemakers Monster Tool Sale breakfast at Placemakers later this month and will be offering free engraving for any tradies’ tools.
Police area prevention manager senior sergeant Hamish Chapman says tool theft has always been an issue and often police struggle to reunite tools with their owners.
“We will do a search warrant and we find tools that we know don’t belong there, often nobody comes forward to claim them. But if they have a unique identifier on them, we can start to return the items to their rightful owners.”
He says the March 31 breakfast will be a chance to educate tradies on site safety and security of their gear.
“A big thing is often they will go off site for a quick trip down to Placemakers, for example, and you just don’t know who is out going for a walk around.
“More often than not, someone will get a window of opportunity and think ‘there’s some good tools, I can flick them off easily’.”
Placemakers Nelson Marlborough hub operations manager Matthew Hansen says the inititive is about encouraging their customers to keep records of their purchases.
“These guys could be looking at thousands of dollars to replace their gear if it’s been a bad hit, some of the big ticket items are up to $2000 to replace.
“We just want to encourage them to take photos of their tools, keep receipts or a catalogue, there may not be much engraving done on the day but we want to reinforce that they need to take the necessary steps to protect their gear.”
