Heroin with a street value of more than £120 million has been discovered hidden among towels and dressing gowns on board a container ship.
Nearly 1.3 tonnes of the class A drug were recovered after it docked at the port of Felixstowe on 30 August.
The record haul would be worth around £27 million to organised criminals at wholesale, and more than £120 million at street value, where it is typically supplied via county lines dealing.
The ship was searched by officers from Border Force and the National Crime Agency. They found a total of 1,297kg of the substance concealed among a cover load of towels and bathrobes, which took officers nearly 6 hours to remove.
Officers then returned the container to the vessel, which continued to Antwerp and docked in the Belgian port city on 1 September.
The container was driven by lorry to a warehouse in Rotterdam, the Netherlands while being under surveillance.
Upon arrival, officers moved in and arrested four people who were in the process of unloading the goods.
The 1.3-tonne haul is the largest ever seizure of heroin in the UK. It follows a bust of 398 kilograms of heroin from a vessel at Felixstowe port on 2 August.
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