Overview

• Manchester Crown Court handed Yudong Ouyang a three-year, six-month term and Gary Hon three years and one month for conspiracy to supply class B drugs on August 18, 2025.
• Investigators found the pair hid roughly 50 kg of cannabis per delivery inside hollowed wooden flooring pallets and ran up to 38 HGV shipments by ferry to Belfast between June 2019 and February 2020.
• NCA and PSNI detectives pieced together encrypted Mandarin message translations, CCTV, phone records, fingerprints and invoice links at cannabis farms to secure convictions.
• The operation exploited legitimate haulage and storage firms unwittingly and routinely shipped empty pallets back to England for reuse in further smuggling runs.
• While this court phase concludes, broader investigations continue into associated cultivation sites and a key organiser believed to be evading UK authorities in China.