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New South Wales police have arrested five men and seized $2.4 million worth of cannabis from a "highly sophisticated" drug operation south of Sydney.
Superintendent Zoran Dzevlan from the Lake Illawarra LAC said officers were patrolling an industrial park in Port Kembla about 2:00am on Friday morning when their suspicions were first raised.
"General duties police located a car they believed to be suspicious," he said.
"Further inquiries led them to a warehouse."
The officers entered the warehouse where they found five men allegedly working on a sophisticated hydroponic set-up.
"When they entered, they observed a large sophisticated cannabis hydroponic cultivation," Superintendent Dzevlan said.
The men, aged between 24 and 44, were arrested and charged with the cultivation of a large commercial quantity of cannabis.
After further investigations, police visited another industrial park in Unanderra where they found a second commercial set-up, believed to be part of the same operation.
Superintendent Zoran said police seized drugs with a street value of $2.4 million across both warehouses.
"In total almost 1,200 cannabis plants [of] varying sizes as well as almost 110 kilograms of dry cannabis leaf," he said.
"I've never seen such a sophisticated hydroponic enterprise."
Superintendent Zoran was full of praise for the patrolling officers who made the discovery.
"These results were not achieved by chance, but as a result of the old-fashioned instinctive traits that police officers have, together with dedicated and persistent police work," he said.
"Importantly, this has resulted in almost $2.5 million in drugs being removed from our streets."
Authorities are appealing for anyone who knows anything about the alleged drug syndicate to contact Crime Stoppers.
The five men were refused bail.
Topics: law-crime-and-justice, courts-and-trials, drugs-and-substance-abuse, lake-illawarra-2528, nsw, wollongong-2500, port-kembla-2505
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