Down at Ports of Auckland in a spotless warehouse Customs staff are hauling out some of the items they've found big hauls of illicit drugs in.
They've pulled out the big guns too — one of their massive imaging trucks they use to look inside containers. It can't be turned on, it'll scramble your insides.
Customs investigations manager Cam Moore points to an industrial-sized scrap metal magnet and boiler which had been found with narcotics inside recently. He reckons his staff know how to keep tight-lipped about their finds.
"We have some really good work stories, we just can't tell them to people. For obvious reason we have to be careful about the way we talk about the work we do."
Their finds are linked to the global meth trade. And they're busy — very busy.
Customs data supplied to 1News reveals that officers are seizing huge amounts of meth at the border — 1243kgs of powder or crystal for the first four months of the year, not far off the 2022 total of 1819 kgs. In 2021 it was 844kgs, in 2020 just 305kgs.
Customs figures dwarf police seizures, who 1News revealed last night are also having a bumper year.
So, has New Zealand become a country that imports meth more than it cooks it?
Moore said the data does point towards the balance changing.
"I think if you look probably back five years ago it is a shift. I think the precursors and the interceptions that we're seeing have not increased at the rate of the finished product that we're seeing."
The Ports of Auckland Operation is intelligence driven. Staff relying on international colleagues and law enforcement partners to target dodgy imports. They're up against cartels and local gangs, who want to have people at key points of the supply chain.
"There could be freight forwarders, it could be baggage handlers, it could be people that work in or around the maritime area and they will potentially apply pressure, they might threaten people."
The amount of suspicious substances coming in has had a flow-on effect to scientists at ESR. Forensic chemistry manager Kevan Walsh said his staff are snowed under.
"For this year we've had a doubling of sample submission into this laboratory over the first three months of this year compared to last year."
All of the difficult samples arrive at this lab, which is focused on rapid testing to keep the flow of honest goods and services flowing. But it's also where the difficult jobs are sent.
"We've certainly seen a marked trend away from just simple illegal importation of large, pure drugs.
"Say methamphetamine will be dissolved into a liquid. Those sorts of concealments create quite serious challenges to the identification."
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