Spanish police found nearly 9 metric tons of cocaine hidden in a shipment of bananas.

The shipment was the largest ever found by Spanish police and the most found in a shipping container in Europe.

Spain is a major transshipment point for drugs entering Europe.

Spanish police have made a record cocaine seizure, finding 8,740 kilos of the drug hidden among 1,080 boxes of bananas in a shipping container at the southern port of Algeciras.

The container was imported by a Colombian company, the Spanish national police said in a statement. It arrived in Spain on a ship from the Colombian port of Turbo, on the Caribbean coast in the northern state of Antioquia.

The stash was the largest ever seized by Spanish police and the largest quantity found in a single shipping container in Europe, the statement said. Six people had been arrested in relation to the find. Two were detained in Lyon, France, one in Algeciras, and three in Malaga, where police also seized two vehicles and a truck. The case is still open, according to the statement.

"The magnificent work of the security forces and bodies in the fight against drug trafficking makes it possible for numerous seizures to take place," Interior Minister Juan Ignacio Zoido said. "But today's is not just one more [seizure], because we are talking about the largest apprehension of cocaine in a container made up to now in Europe."

Spanish Interior Minister Juan Ignacio Zoido, right, watches officers inspect cocaine intercepted in a shipment of bananas, in Algeciras, Spain, April 25, 2018. Juan Ignacio Zoido/Twitter

Customs did not say when the bust was made though the shipment was last inspected by police on Sunday, according to the statement.

The bust tops a high-seas seizure of 7.6 metric tons of cocaine made in 1999, and the operation follows a bust in December of 6 metric tons of cocaine also in Algeciras, the Mediterranean's largest port and a transshipment hub used by firms to unload cargo and redistribute it in Europe or the Middle East.

Drug seizures involving shipping containers have increased considerably in recent years, rising sixfold between 2006 and 2016, according to the European Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction. And bananas have been a particularly popular product in which to hide the illicit cargo.

In July 2016, prosecutors in Romania found 2.3 tons of cocaine hidden in crates of bananas from Colombia and other countries. In September 2016, police in Spain intercepted nearly 2,000 pounds of cocaine hidden in a commercial shipment of bananas from Colombia that arrived in Algeciras. In March 2017, Spanish police in Malaga and Valencia seized 37.5 pounds of cocaine — 15 pounds of which was hidden inside fake bananas made of resin. In April last year, German police intercepted what they believed to be 847 pounds of cocaine in a shipment of bananas that arrived in Hamburg from Ecuador.

(Reporting for Reuters by Paul Day; editing by Julien Toyer and Angus MacSwan)