$135m in drugs smuggled from same port

Detective Inspector Bruce Good says the seizure is an important disruption to an international drug network. Picture / Paul Estcourt

Authorities have seized $95 million worth of crystal methamphetamine - nearly enough to supply one million people with individual hits of the drug P.

The haul, the largest in New Zealand, was found in a shipping container and came within a week of a second container that carried $40 million worth of pseudoephedrine.

Police say both shipments of drugs would have been supplied to the local market by criminal networks throughout the country.

The drugs came from the southern Chinese port town of Shekou.

Detective Inspector Bruce Good said the drug busts followed an investigation that started early this year and involved dozens of people, including authorities in Hong Kong.

He said the result was an important disruption to an international drug network.

Six people are in custody after appearing in the Auckland District Court this week.

At least two of the people were based in Auckland and found at a Kohimarama address searched by the police on Monday night.

During the search officers discovered more than $60,000 in cash, money-counting machines, false passports, three handguns, a James Bond-type pen gun which takes a .22 bullet, and a M-16 assault rifle. All the guns were loaded.

Police are saying little about how the drugs were concealed in the shipping containers but the Herald understands the crystal methamphetamine was packaged in 95 plastic bags, many covered in green paint.

The pseudoephedrine was in the form of a precursor drug called Contact NT and was hidden in 25kg packets of Aer-Block Mortar and Plaster.

The pink Contact NT was in a crushed form and was the equivalent of 670,000 tablets - more than 50 per cent of the total amount seized coming into New Zealand in the 2005-06 year.

Customs drug investigations manager Simon Williamson said the drug busts were the largest of their kind in the country.

The P bust was 12 times larger than the previous largest crystal methamphetamine seizure which occurred in January when 8.2kg, valued at $8.2 million, was found at the Ports of Auckland.

Mr Williamson said it was difficult to tell what impact the latest bust would have on the drug market but it did indicate how large the demand had become.

He said that for a number of years Customs had been talking openly about the impact of transnational organised crime activity.

"These recent seizures add substance to what Customs and the police have been saying," said Mr Williamson.

Many of the most horrific crimes in the past few years have been committed by people high on P.

They include the abduction and rape of a Napier woman by Trevor Eagle, the samurai sword attack by Antonie Dixon at Pipiroa near Thames in which one woman lost her hand and a man was later shot dead, and the murder of Wairarapa 6-year-old Coral-Ellen Burrows by her stepfather Steven Williams.