A man who helped import more than a tonne of chemicals used to cut hard drugs has been jailed after a six-month police investigation.

Shem Lovelace-Hall, 20, arranged for benzocaine and phenacetin to be shipped to his Thornton Heath flat earlier this year, but drums of the cutting agents - commonly used to bulk out cocaine - were seized by border agents at Felixstowe.

Detectives believe the amount of chemicals he bought would have "contributed to the production of drugs with a street value of £32.5m."

The Metropolitan Police said in a statement: "A search of the Thornton Heath flat identified financial material linking Lovelace-Hall to these offences, and analysis of his laptop and mobile phones identified a large volume of material implicating him in the large-scale importation of cutting agents."

Lovelace-Hall was arrested in September, and admitted money laundering and importing the cutting agents at Croydon Crown Court on Wednesday, December 2.

Yesterday he was jailed for 10 years.

Det Sgt Phil Carruth, of Croydon crime squad, said: "This was a bespoke investigation over a six-month period by Met officers working in conjunction with the National Crime Agency.

"Tenacious detective work resulted in the seizure of a large quantity of cutting agent that had no purpose other than to be illicitly cut with class A drugs."