Revealed: The £1m drugs factory in Northampton
The full extent of a £1m cannabis factory in St James was revealed after police lifted the lid on the huge drugs warehouse.
The Chonicle & Echo went into the old bakery building in St James Park Road, Northampton, yesterday to see the vast drugs operation police closed down this week.
Thousands of cannabis plants – with a street value believed to be in excess of 1 million – were discovered at the two-storey site after police were called to the apparently disused building after a disturbance in the early hours of Wednesday.
Kelvin Leaton, a detective constable who has worked on the drugs team for Northamptonshire Police for about two years, said: "This is the biggest one I have come across, and I have seen well in excess of 50 cannabis factories. This is easily the biggest building I have seen.
"There is an incredible amount of equipment in there and there's a lot of space. They have constructed all the internal walls."
He said the criminals who set up the factory – at a cost of at least 30,000 – had illegally tapped straight into the electricity mains as a power supply for the lights to cultivate the plants.
The upstairs of the building included living facilities so that whoever was growing the plants could stay there 24 hours a day so as not to arouse suspicion from neighbours who may see them coming and going. Helpers would deliver supplies every so often.
The complex operation also involved setting up a ventilation system due to the massive amount of heat given off by the light bulbs, and the system had to be littered with mothballs to mask the cannabis smell outside the building.
The plants were cleared out of the warehouse yesterday into a skip.
After police have taken samples as evidence in any forthcoming court case, the plants will be destroyed.
Police sergeant Louise Simpson said: "The operation that is set up here is quite substantial. It's far bigger that what we generally find in the community, which is houses that might be set up as cannabis factories. It's a significant find, it will impact severely on the supply of cannabis across the area."
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Friday 10 February 2012
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