British police seized a record 5.7 tonnes of cocaine on February 8 in a container at the port of Southampton (South), the National Crime Agency (NCA) announced today.

The cocaine, with an estimated retail value of more than £450 million (525 million euros) based on British black market prices, was hidden in a shipment of bananas from South America.

NCA researchers believe that the final destination of the goods was Hamburg (Germany).

The previous records were 3.7 and 3.2 tonnes, said the NCA, which estimates that the drug trade in Britain has an annual turnover of four billion pounds.

The agency highlighted the close relationship between cocaine trafficking, which has seen “exponential growth” in recent years, and violence.

In a press release from the agency, the director of the NCA, Chris Farrimond, emphasized that this seizure is a “major blow to the international cartels”, as it “deprives them of huge revenues”.

In recent months, large quantities of this drug have been seized by the authorities of the Netherlands, Belgium and Spain, i.e. the three European countries considered to be the main gateways for the importation of cocaine, which arrives mainly from Panama, Colombia and Ecuador.

A total of 116 tonnes of cocaine were seized in the Belgian port of Antwerp last year, a record, while Dutch authorities said they seized 59.1 tonnes of cocaine in the same period.

Antwerp and Rotterdam (Netherlands) are often the scene of shootouts and explosions; these crimes are generally believed to be linked to a secret war for territorial control between powerful international drug cartels.

These two ports are the main gateways used by a “super cartel”, based in Dubai (UAE), responsible for the movement of a third of the total amount of cocaine in Europe, which Europol announced was dismantled at the end of 2022.

Cocaine is usually transported hidden in containers, but sometimes also on the ships themselves, for example in specially designed compartments in the bottoms, from which divers retrieve them.