Cable Seals

A cable seal is a seal consisting of an aluminium or plastic housing and a steel cable. You thread the cable through an opening, click it into the housing, and the seal can then no longer be opened without visible damage. When cut, the steel cable frays, making reuse impossible. Cable seals are available with cable diameters from 1.5 to 5 mm, with breaking strengths from 240 to 1,900 kg.

Cable seals are used in situations where a seal needs to pass through a small or hard-to-reach opening, or where a rigid bolt seal won't fit. Think of bent container locks, flanges, couplings, machinery and trolleys carrying valuable items. Thinner cable seals are used in industry and for internal transport. Thicker, ISO-certified variants are intended for sealing sea containers in international transport.

The Cable Seal 350 and Cable Seal 500 are both ISO 17712:2013 certified and therefore suitable for international container transport. This certification is mandatory for export and is recognized worldwide by customs authorities, including C-TPAT and ISPS. Thinner cable seals such as the 150, 180 and CS-2 300 fall under the security seal category and aren't ISO-certified for container transport.

The steel cable consists of several layers of thin, braided wires. As soon as you cut the cable, the bundle unravels and the individual wires fray. This means the cable can no longer be pulled back through the housing, rendering the seal unusable. This makes reuse impossible and fraud immediately visible.

You choose a cable seal for a container when a bolt seal won't fit through the lock. On older or damaged containers, the closures are sometimes bent or too narrow for a bolt seal, which needs an opening of at least 8 mm. The flexible steel cable of a cable seal does fit through tight or crooked openings. For international transport, choose the Cable Seal 350 with a 3.5 mm cable. For valuable cargo or extra heavy-duty applications, the Cable Seal 500 with a 5 mm cable and a breaking strength of 1,900 kg is the better choice.

A fixed-length cable seal can't be pulled fully tight. The cable clicks into the housing at a set distance, so there's always some slack left. This matters for moving parts, such as machine valves, doors or vehicles that vibrate during use. Because the seal isn't pulled tight, no constant tension builds up on the cable, greatly reducing the risk of breakage from peak loads.