CANBERRA, Oct. 30 (Xinhua) -- Police in South Australia (SA) have discovered a high-tech methamphetamine "super lab."
SA Police arrested three people on drugs-related charges on Monday night after uncovering the lab at a property in the suburbs of Adelaide.
Detective Superintendent Mark Trenwith said that the facility was capable of producing illicit drugs worth "hundreds of millions of dollars."
"This - what you could describe as a 'super lab' - is one of the largest meth labs ever discovered in South Australia," Trenwith told reporters at a media briefing.
Trenwith said that authorities found large volumes of precursor chemicals and hundreds of kg of pseudoephedrine powder, a key ingredient in making methamphetamine, at the property.
"The most significant outcome of this joint operation is that hundreds of kg of meth will be prevented from hitting the street," he said.
"Construction processes were (also) underway at this site to build more large scale, clandestine lab equipment," he said.
"In terms of clandestine lab equipment this is definitely the biggest industrial-sized clandestine lab set-up that we've seen," he said.
The most recent report from the National Wastewater Analysis Drug Monitoring Program in April revealed that methamphetamine was Australia's most-consumed illicit drug.
According to the report, Australians use 8.4 million tonnes of methamphetamine every year.
