A gang of suspected drug traffickers is accused of shipping 450kg of ecstasy to Australia hidden inside a digger.

Danny Brown of Kings Hall Road in Bromley is one of six men charged over the alleged plot to transport the illicit cargo from the UK to the Port of Brisbane last year.

When the excavator arrived down under officers at the port discovered 226 packages of the drug, MDMA, concealed inside the specially adapted boom of the machine.

A joint investigation between the National Crime Agency in Britain and the Australian Federal Police uncovered details of the alleged conspiracy by a London-based crime group to export the Class A drugs to Australia.

Messages obtained as part of Operation Venetic, the UK investigation into the EncroChat network used by organised crime syndicates, detailed plans to purchase the excavator, hand-drawn illustrations of the concealment within the boom, costs relating to the importation and confirmation it had been loaded onto a vessel in Southampton and arrived in Brisbane seven weeks later.

On Tuesday, the 53-year-old from Bromley appeared at Kingston Crown Court along with five other defendants, all charged with conspiring to export Class A drugs.

Brown's fellow accused are Stefan Baldauf, Piotr Malinowski and Peter Murray from London and William Sartin and Tony Borg from Essex. They were all six remanded to appear again on April 16 for a pre-trial hearing.

Two men aged 33 and 42 were also charged in Australia.

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