Drug smugglers who used a customised refrigerated van to try to get cocaine and heroin through the port of Dover have been jailed.

Nine men and a woman were locked up for more than 89 years in total following an investigation by the National Crime Agency.

They found a group of six from Liverpool had plotted with four Kent-based haulage workers to bring drugs with a potential wholesale value of £464,000, with a street value of £1.4m, to the UK from Antwerp in Belgium.

The group centred around Edward Avis, 64, from Liverpool, who was sentenced to 12 years at Manchester Crown Court.

His associates Ian Pauline, 51, Phillip Cray, 54, Paul Firth, 41, Darren Hunter, 49 and Terri Mellor, 48, received sentences of 45-a-half years between them.

Latvians Andris Baltais, 40, from Ramsgate, Alekanders Voroneckis and Aigars Kokins, both 29, and from Chatham, and Ukrainian Viktor Medvetskiy, 43, also from Chatham, were sentenced to nine years, seven years, seven years and nine years respectively.

The conspiracy was brought to a close in March 2016 when Antwerp police officers watched Avis, Pauline, Voroneckis and Kokins conduct a handover in an alleyway.

Kokins and Voroneckis returned with a black bag to a refrigerated van.

They were arrested moments after hiding 7.7kg of cocaine and almost 6.5kg of heroin, split into 13 packages, in a concealment under the van’s floor.

Avis and Pauline drove away in a car before being stopped and arrested by the police.

NCA branch commander David Norris said: “The judge told them to expect substantial custodial sentences and the courts have delivered.

“If this group had been successful, the cocaine and heroin would have ended up on the streets of Merseyside with the profits funding more criminality.

“Our partnership with the Belgian police meant the drugs Avis got his hands on never reached the UK, putting an end to a cycle of harm before it got going.

“We’ll continue to work with our law enforcement colleagues in both the UK and the rest of the world to prevent smugglers from importing illicit cargo to the UK from abroad.”