by Paul Hooper

A Whitstable businessman has been convicted of being the mastermind behind one of Kent's biggest cannabis factories.

John Read, 54, ran a series of printing companies and an art gallery in Tankerton.

But a jury at Canterbury Crown Court heard how he leased THREE buildings - to harvest drugs with a street value of more than £3.3m.

Sentence was adjourned until August but he was warned by the Judge Recorder Peter Gower QC he faced "an inevitable jail sentence of a substantial length".

One of them - Unit 1B on the Joseph Wilson Business Estate in Whitstable - was rented from Tesco supermarket chain.

When undercover police officers raided it in May last year, they discovered a seven-room factory dedicated to the growing of cannabis.

The officer leading Operation Nursery, Dave Godden said: "This is probably the biggest operation we have ever seen in Kent."

At Unit 1B, officers discovered plants at various stages of growth, from cuttings to mature plants.

There were also water butts with pumps and hoses to water the plants, venting equipment and more than 650 root balls from a crop already taken away for drying.

DC Godden said that 966 plants were taken away - but police also found evidence of more than 800 roots from previous crops.

He said: "There is no doubt this was a professional operation. They had recruited illegal Vietnamese people to act as "gardeners".

"Closing down these three factories has probably saved an awful lot of misery to a lot of people in the UK."

Operation Nursery also revealed factories at a barn in Wootton, near Dover and Coombe Valley Road in Dover.

Although four Vietnamese workers were arrested on site - the paper trail led back to Read, a married man from Marine Parade in Whitstable.

He has leased all three places - using his printing company and art gallery as a cover.

The jury, which listened to evidence for more than four weeks, had retired for 10 hours before finding him guilty of six counts of conspiracy to grow cannabis and perverting the course of justice.

His business pal Roger Coombs, 70, from Crawley was acquitted on four similar charges but found guilty on one charge of perverting the course of justice.