Police following the scent of a pungent aroma walked in on a cannabis factory worth more than half-a-million pounds.

Officers had been alerted to the strange smell and suspicious activities at an industrial unit at The Shipyard in Upper Brents.

Maidstone Crown Court heard how when police arrived they spotted three men jumping over a fence to escape.

Two of them - Danjelo Sadikaj, 27, and Endrit Lapardhoti, 23 - sat with their heads bowed after pleading guilty to being involved in the production of cannabis.

The raid on March 27 had been watched by drugs CCTV operators from inside the huge unit.

Police caught Sadikaj and Lapardhoti, both from Albania, but the third man escaped and is still on the run.

Prosecutor Aska Fujita said inside the warehouse police discovered cannabis growing “on an industrial scale" with almost 1,400 plants expected to yield the drug dealers more than £550,000.

Ms Fujita told how when police arrived, one of three men was seen climbing a wall after ditching a CCTV camera.

She said: “This was a sophisticated commercial operation in the production of cannabis with rooms for plant growing on two floors and rooms where cuttings were stored or were being dried.

“There were also cameras pointed to the outside."

Both men claimed they had been hired by fellow Albanians to look after the building for £300 a day.

Sadikaj claimed he was hired to do some building work but when he discovered the cannabis factory he was threatened he would be killed if he left.

Both men appeared via prison video link and Sadikaj began crying as the court heard his mother had died in a road accident in 2014.

He also claimed he faced £20,000 medical bills for his ill sister and took the money to try to pay off the debts.

Max Reeves, for Lapardhoti, said he was a pizza delivery worker and had been hired by the drugs gang as a CCTV operator.

Jailing them for three years each, Judge Adele Williams said: “This was growing cannabis in industrial quantities for commercial gain.”

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