Co-op is now using an invisible forensic spray to secretly mark commonly stolen items, including alcohol, laundry detergents and sweets — the latest tactic in a widening crackdown on shoplifting that coincides with a new law on retail crime.
The spray, already tested in Manchester and London since last year and now being rolled out nationally, contains a unique forensic code specific to the location where the items were sold. This allows the Co-op to identify where stolen goods are being resold and report it to the police, who can then trace the origin of the items when investigating physical shops or online stores suspected of handling stolen stock.
The technology is not new to law enforcement. Police forces have used similar forensic marking to track stolen bikes and valuables, and to protect domestic abuse victims. The invisible liquid, often branded as SmartWater™, glows under UV light and is described by the College of Policing as best practice in retail crime prevention. SmartWater boasts a 100% conviction rate when presented in court over 25 years. The Co-op itself has previously equipped security officers in around 400 stores with a handheld spray called SmartTag, containing the same forensic signature, to deter attacks on staff and provide evidence in extreme circumstances. Retailers including Boots, Homebase and BT have also used the technology to tag high-theft items.
The forensic spray is just one component of a much broader security overhaul. The Co-op has invested approximately £250 million in measures that include body-worn cameras for staff, more security guards, reinforced kiosks for high-value products such as spirits and tobacco, and special shelving kits designed to prevent large quantities of goods being swept into bags. The supermarket is also testing artificial intelligence to identify unusual activity via CCTV cameras in stores, alerting staff so they can intervene.
These measures appear to be having an impact. The Co-op reported that overall retail crime in its stores fell by 21% year-on-year in 2025, with physical attacks on colleagues down 31% and anti-social behaviour and abuse down 36%. Yet the scale of the problem remains stark. In February 2024, the Co-op said it was experiencing around 1,000 incidents of shoplifting and abuse daily across its 2,400 stores, including more than 1,325 physical assaults on store workers in 2023 — an average of three to four attacks per day. Losses from theft and fraud reached £39.5 million in the first half of 2024 alone, up 19% on the previous year, following total losses of £70 million in 2023.
The company has also forged partnerships with police in 20 areas to share evidence such as CCTV images, helping to catch repeat offenders. In the last year, this collaboration resulted in 500 prolific offenders receiving custodial sentences that collectively amounted to more than 100 years.
New law targets retail crime
The introduction of the forensic spray comes as the Crime and Policing Bill received royal assent on Wednesday, passing into law. The bill creates a new standalone offence of assaulting a retail worker, carrying a maximum penalty of six months in prison and an unlimited fine. On first conviction, courts are expected to impose a Criminal Behaviour Order, which can ban offenders from visiting specific shops or premises.
Perhaps more significantly, the new law repeals the £200 threshold for so-called “low-value” shop theft. Under the previous system, thefts under £200 were treated as a summary offence, leading to a perception that police did not prioritise such incidents. The change means all shop theft is now treated as “general theft” — an either-way offence with a maximum custodial sentence of seven years — regardless of the value of the goods taken.
The government is also backing the “Opal project”, a collaboration between police and retailers. In its first three months, Operation Opal identified 152 prolific offenders linked to organised retail crime. Since May 2024, the unit’s Organised Retail Crime Team has led to more than 100 arrests across 31 organised crime groups, with £5.2 million in losses linked to those offenders. Paul Gerrard, policy director at the Co-op, said the shift in attitude from all sides had been decisive: “We have now got businesses taking this seriously, police taking it seriously and government taking it seriously. Everyone is pointed in the right direction and we are starting to see things improve.”
He added that police were now responding to calls 70% of the time, compared with just 20% in 2023. Gerrard was blunt about the nature of the shoplifting crisis. “This is not about an extra avocado going into an M&S bag,” he said. “That is not the reason we are seeing crime at these levels, it is about people taking out an entire meat section for resale.”
Official figures last year revealed that annual shoplifting offences in England and Wales had passed half a million for the first time. The most recent data for the year ending December 2024 recorded 516,971 shop theft offences — a 20% year-on-year increase and the highest level since 2002/03. The British Retail Consortium’s Crime Report 2025 estimated around 737,000 incidents of violence and abuse in the 2023-2024 period, up from 475,000 the previous year, equating to roughly 1,300 incidents a day. The Association of Convenience Stores reported around 59,000 incidents of violence and 1.2 million incidents of verbal abuse in the convenience sector alone. Usdaw figures from March 2025 showed 77% of workers had experienced verbal abuse, 53% had received threats, and 10% had been physically assaulted in the 12 months to December 2024. A think tank highlighted that 67% of shoplifting offenders go on to commit another offence within 12 months, up from 55% before the pandemic.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer said this week that the “tide could be turning” on shoplifting, pointing to a 17% rise in people charged. He described the previous situation as a “shoplifting free-for-all” and called the abuse of retail staff “disgraceful”. He said CCTV footage that could be shared immediately with police should be used more widely, adding that “the hope of technology” could make a difference.
Despite the progress, Gerrard warned that problems remain. About 100 Co-op staff are still likely to face abuse in a single day, and up to four are physically attacked.
