TWO men who ran one of the largest amphetamine factories ever discovered in the UK have hd their sentences increased.
The factory was producing drugs with a street value of £10million in the south Warwickshire countryside.
Officers from the National Crime Agency (NCA) raided the site, with assistance from Warwickshire Police, in Ullenhall Lane near Henley-in-Arden in April 2021.
The drugs lab was capable of producing 400 kilos of amphetamine per month, worth £2million at wholesale and up to £10million at street level. The drugs were distributed to dealers in the West Midlands, London and Kent.
Keith Davis and Andrew Gurney were part of a gang of four who were jailed for drugs offences.
Davis, 62, of Chalfont St Giles in Buckinghamshire was originally sentenced to five years and three months behind bars, while and Gurney, 51, of Quinton, Birmingham, was given six years and three months.
But a hearing at the Court of Appeal ruled their previous sentences were unduly lenient and a judge increased them to ten years each.
NCA branch commander Matt McMillan said: “Keith Davis and Andrew Gurney were key players in running one of the largest drugs laboratories ever found in the UK.
“They carefully planned this criminal enterprise, undergoing chemistry training to run the facility.
“The drugs they produced were distributed to dealers from the West Midlands to London and Kent, and will have fuelled violence, fear and exploitation in communities across the UK.
“This ruling emphasises the seriousness of their criminality, and the NCA continues to target those behind the highest risk and most complex criminal threats to the UK.”
The original court hearing was told work had started on the south Warwickshire building in March 2020 and it began producing drugs in May of that year. The gang initially bought amphetamine pre-cursor chemical benzyl methyl ketone (BMK) but quickly realised it was more profitable to make it themselves.
Plumes of noxious fumes billowed from the outbuilding when it was opened by specialist crews from West Midlands Fire Service, who had to wait several hours before searching it due to the hazardous chemicals inside. Waste products from the production process, which had been flushed into the sewerage system, had also contaminated a nearby field.
The NCA’s investigation formed part of Operation Venetic, the UK law enforcement response to the July 2020 takedown of the EncroChat encrypted communication service. NCA investigators identified encrypted messaging platform EncroChat was being used to run the illicit Warwickshire lab.
