FAIRFIELD — The contraband was crates, totes and pallets.

Authorities say tens of thousands of them, nearly all stamped with the names and logos of national retailers, were carted by the truckload to two township warehouses.

Once there, they were ground down and then remanufactured into similar but new — and unmarked — goods. They were then resold, for as much as three times the price the companies paid for the ill-gotten goods, authorities said.

After a two-month investigation, township police and the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office this week put a major dent in the local trade of illicit plastics, charging eight people with receiving stolen property, a news release from the prosecutor’s office said.

After getting search warrants for the two warehouses — Farmplast, on Washington Avenue, and Adali Plastics, on Pier Lane West — as well as an Englewood Cliffs residence associated with Farmplast, authorities recovered more than $100,000 worth of stolen crates and pallets, the release said.

They bore the names of companies such as Rite Aid, CVS, Pepsi-Cola, and Walgreens, as well as from the United States Postal Service.

Arrested were Fernando Marzan, 20; Elvis Fermin, 20; Armando DeDios, 29; Luis Hernandez, 24; Michael Malave, 19; and Victor Tejada Jr., 25, all of Paterson; Richard Ferreria, 32, of Haledon; and Alfredo DeDios, 53, of Hackensack.

The investigation is ongoing and prosecutors expect to file additional charges, Fairfield Deputy Chief Anthony Manna said.

“People were still bringing items to the locations by the truckloads” as township police secured the facilities, Manna said. “That means that they’re hunting every night.”

Jim Rood, a retired major with the Baltimore Police Department who helped kick-start the investigation on behalf of a retailers group, said the theft of plastic products nationwide cost companies about $500 million in 2012.

Citing the ongoing investigation and any eventual prosecution, Rood declined to disclose details of what he gleaned when he went by one of the warehouses earlier this year.

But he said that a similar scam in Philadelphia made hefty profits by grinding down crates and other plastic shipping containers at a cost of about 10 cents a pound and then selling the finished product for about 30 cents a pound.

The Philadelphia ring operated by using two-person teams that stole crates by the dozens from retailers, Rood explained. The haulers were paid 15 cents to 25 cents per container. They earned about $600 a week, he said.

“It’s a huge, huge industry that we as consumers are not aware of,” said Rood, whose Maryland-based JR Investigative Services works with COMBAT, or Control Of Missing Baskets And Trays, an industry group that includes representatives of Pepsi, H&S Bakery, Flowers Foods, Bimbo Bakeries, Cloverland Dairy and other manufacturers.

“That’s how they do their daily business,” he said of the retailers. “They want their crates back to do their deliveries.”

Neither Farmplast nor Adali representatives could be reached for comment.

Rood said that although the public — and some law enforcement agencies — take the containers for granted, the loss of tens of thousands of crates, which cost about $3 to $4 each to manufacture, and soda pallets, which can run up to $30 to make, add up. That cost eventually gets passed back to the consumer, he said. Rood commended local authorities for their diligence.

“I can’t say enough about that group. They were A-1,” he said. “A lot of police departments don’t want to mess with it because it’s just plastic.”

MORE ESSEX COUNTY NEWS

FOLLOW THE STAR-LEDGER: TWITTER • FACEBOOK • GOOGLE+