Another arrest has been made following yesterday's record meth haul in Northland.
A 25-year-old man was arrested in Auckland on Tuesday, and will appear in Manukau District Court this morning, charged with importing Class A drugs and possession for supply.
Half a tonne of meth was recovered from 90 Mile Beach at the weekend -- most of it on an abandoned boat, some in a campervan and the rest buried in sand dunes, discovered after police found the location stored on the dealers' GPS device.
It dwarfs previous meth hauls, and was significantly more than all the meth recovered in the 2015 calendar year.
The bust came as a surprise to police, who say it'll take an international effort to bust the ring that sent the drugs here.
Police Commissioner Mike Bush says it was the result of "good local policing, combined with information from the public".
"It did require the local police to do a lot of follow-up -- spend the whole weekend following up on leads, exploring different things. What came to fruition was the local constable discovering nearly half a tonne of methamphetamine."
The organised crime team has now taken over the investigation.
"It's obviously a network that has international links, so what we're doing now is working our way through to identify the network involved and doing what we can to hold everyone involved to account."
While data shows meth use in New Zealand is declining, Cmmr Bush says the amount police are recovering, and officers' experiences on the front line show it's still a "really, really serious concern".
"This is beyond what we thought was happening. This is a hugely significant amount by anyone's standards. It's not a surprise these networks use all types of methodology for importing controlled drugs, but the scale of it is a surprise to us."
A police-funded Massey University study in 2014 showed meth use peaked in 2001, with about 5 percent of people aged 15-45 trying it at least once. This declined to about 1 percent in 2013/14.
Massey University drug researcher Chris Wilkins says it's an incredible find, and should make a difference on the streets.
"We tend to pick up increases in prices at lower levels of availability after large seizures like this," he told Paul Henry on Wednesday.
"I think what will be really interesting is how long that shortage lasts for and the scale of that shortage."
Three men appeared in Kaitaia District Court on Tuesday morning, jointly charged with importing Class A drugs and possession for supply of a Class A drug, namely methamphetamine. They were granted name suppression and have been remanded in custody.
Some of the meth police recovered (supplied)
Local Labour MP Kelvin Davis says the record size of the bust shows the scale of the problem.
"We need to do our part and help the authorities, but really the authorities have the resources -- if they don't, they should get the resources to monitor our coastline thoroughly, because we can't afford to have this sort of haul coming across our borders."
The next step for police is to figure out where the meth came from.
"There's a lot of intelligence that we have now," says Cmmr Bush. "We'll work with our international colleagues to identify all the people involved. There will be some quite interesting techniques applied which I won't go into, but we'll use the international networks that we've built up over the years."
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