Dutch customs seized in the port of Rotterdam more than 1.6 tonnes of cocaine, concealed in shipments of bananas, cocoa beans and cement, the prosecution announced on Wednesday. The drug, with an estimated resale value of 127 million euros ($ 143 million), was hidden in three containers that arrived at Europe’s largest port.
“The first container came from Ecuador and was loaded with bananas destined for a company in Barendrecht”, near Rotterdam, prosecutors explained. “The drugs in the second container were found in a shipment of cocoa beans, also from Ecuador, but which had passed through Colombia and then arrived via Antwerp,” they said. A third container, loaded with cement bound for Portugal, contained five sports bags filled with drugs.
68 tonnes of cocaine seized this year, a record
Drug seizures have exploded this year in the port of Rotterdam, now considered one of the main gateways to Europe for drugs, especially cocaine. Dutch customs officials said on Tuesday they had confiscated a record 68 tonnes of cocaine this year, up from 49 tonnes in 2020. The EU crime-fighting body has warned that the Netherlands and neighboring Belgium were becoming major hubs for cocaine, especially for consignments from Colombia.
The North Sea coast has now “overtaken the Iberian Peninsula as the main entry point for cocaine into Europe,” Europol said in a report in September. After cannabis, cocaine is the second most popular drug in Western and Central Europe, with an estimated 4.4 million users in the past year, according to this report.