National Crime Agency and Border Force officers have seized 25 inflatable boats that were due to be shipped to gangs involved in people smuggling across the English Channel.
The boats were identified by the NCA and the Home Office Intelligence Team in pallets on an air freight shipment travelling from Turkey to the Netherlands. The consignment passed through a freight hub at East Midlands Airport, allowing officers to intercept it on Friday 2 October.
Each boat is around nine metres long. The NCA says that, had the vessels reached people smugglers, each could have been used to carry around 70 people across the Channel. Together, the 25 boats could have transported around 1,700 people seeking to enter the United Kingdom illegally.
This is the second time a large consignment of small boat equipment has been seized in the United Kingdom this year, and the first time such a detection has been made in air freight. In July, 25 boats and 25 engines were seized in a maritime consignment at Felixstowe. The vessel carrying them had stopped there on the way to Germany.
Craig Turner, NCA Deputy Director of Investigations, said the agency continues to target groups and individuals involved in the supply of boats and engines used for people smuggling in the Channel. He said the work is taking place both overseas, with international partners, and in the United Kingdom, and has so far led to the seizure of more than 1,600 boats and engines, denying their use to criminal networks.
“Our assessment is that this is having an impact, driving up the cost of boats and engines, making it more difficult to get them to the coast and eating into the profits of the criminal gangs involved,” he said. “I have no doubt the boats we have seized here would have ended up being used to risk the lives of a huge number of people in the Channel had we not stepped in. Our investigation continues.”
Anna Turley, Minister for Border Security and Asylum, said the seizure delivers another blow to the smuggling gangs. She said disruptions to supply lines are happening more often as the government seeks to reduce illegal and dangerous crossings.
She added that progress is being made, with this summer seeing the lowest number of small boat arrivals since 2020 and arrests for immigration crime up 74 per cent on the previous year. “We will continue to be relentless as we restore control to our border,” she said.
Targeting, disrupting and dismantling the gangs involved in organised immigration crime remains a top priority for the NCA, which has around 100 investigations under way.
Last month the NCA published an assessment which found that constraints on the supply of boats and engines have been a key factor affecting the organised crime groups involved in Channel crossings. The assessment concluded that law enforcement activity has been a key factor in reducing the number of people transported to the United Kingdom illegally by small boat in the first half of 2026.
In the year to April 2026, arrests linked to organised immigration crime involving the NCA increased by more than 55 per cent.
By A.Ikechukwu
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