A lorry carrying enough ingredients to make one billion ecstasy pills has been discovered by police in The Netherlands.

The massive haul included 100 bottles of hydrogen gas, 15 tonnes of caustic soda and 3,000 litres of other chemicals.

Local police say the value of the raw materials ran into hundreds of thousands of euros, and the HGV was probably being used as a storage facility for an ecstasy laboratory.

It is believed some of the chemicals were stolen, as the canisters of hydrogen gas found on board cannot be purchased publicly.

Officers in the southern province of Zeeland began investigating the lorry because it had not moved from a parking space for a long time.


The Netherlands is known as one of the world's manufacturing centres for ecstasy, which is a Class A drug.

Earlier this week, a report for the British charity DrugWise warned that drugs including ecstasy are being sold at unprecedented levels of purity in the UK.