Cocaine worth £80m shipped with kitchenware seized at Essex port by Border Force

Border Force officers have intercepted a huge shipment of cocaine, believed to have a street value of around £80m, at an Essex port.

The National Crime Agency (NCA) stated that it had launched an investigation following the one-tonne seizure at London Gateway Port on Friday.

However, the UK is not believed to have been the end destination for the drugs, with the ship carrying them having been bound for Norway.

The shrink-wrapped drugs were found inside a number of holdalls in a container that had been shipped from Panama along with a "cover load" of ceramics and kitchenware.

"This was a fantastic seizure by our colleagues at Border Force, and taking this amount of cocaine out of circulation will have deprived the organised criminals involved of millions in profits," NCA senior investigating officer Paul Orchard said.

Police seizures of cocaine hit a record high last year, with 23,706 finds logged in the year to March 2025 - up 13% from the previous year.

Read more from Sky News:
Mohamed Salah to leave Liverpool
Transgender girls given deadline to leave Guides

Meanwhile, Border Force and police intercepted drugs on a record-breaking 269,000 occasions, an increase of 24% on the year before.

The discovery follows the recent seizure of 943kg of cocaine from a shipping container at Southampton Docks with an estimated street value of £75m.

(c) Sky News 2026: Cocaine worth £80m shipped with kitchenware seized at Essex port by Border Force