Customs officials have confiscated a consignment of eight million illegal cigarettes which were being stored in a warehouse in Someren in Brabant. The cigarettes, piled on 22 pallets and without stamps indicating that tax had been paid on them, were found by police during another investigation.

Should the cigarettes have reached the Dutch market, the treasury would have lost out on some €3.6 million in duty.

Two people have been arrested, one of whom is a 45-year-old Polish national. The other is 47 and lives in Helmond.

The price of a packet of 20 cigarettes went up by almost a euro earlier this year to around €11.10 as a part of further government moves to discourage smoking.

Yet, while higher taxes on cigarettes are encouraging more people to stop smoking, smuggling is also on the increase, according to research by the finance and health ministries which was published last month.

Once every two years researchers collect empty cigarette packets that have been thrown on the street and check their origins, to gain an insight into smokers’ behaviour in the Netherlands.

In 2021, during the last survey, 15% of the empty packets had contained cigarettes which had not been subject to Dutch tobacco duties. But that had risen to 25% last year, the ministries said on Tuesday.

While nearly 19% of the cigarettes had been bought in a shop in another country,  4% were either fake branded cigarettes or had been smuggled in. Two years previously, just 1% were either fake or illegal.

Research by the public health institute RIVM also indicates that smokers buy around 10% of their tobacco abroad, by either importing it themselves or asking others to do so.