Police stumbled on one of the biggest cannabis factories West Mercia Police had ever seen when a suspected fuel theft brought officers to an industrial unit off Sandy Lane in Stourport-on-Severn in the early hours of 7 February 2013.[1][2] Officers found a network of hydroponic equipment with heating and ventilation fans and at least 2,000 plants at various stages of growth in the unit on Barracks Road.[1] Detective Inspector Carl Moore said the discovery was purely by chance, crediting the member of the public who reported the supposed fuel theft and the first officers on the scene, who looked around after finding no evidence of one.[1]

Nine men were arrested near Sandy Lane and four more in a car on Hagley Road West in Quinton, with a fifteenth person arrested that afternoon; most were from the Birmingham area and were held at Kidderminster, Redditch and Worcester.[1] Two of those held, Vietnamese nationals Quan Vo, 22, and Quang Nguyen, 34, admitted producing cannabis and were each jailed for two and a half years at Worcester Crown Court on 22 April 2013, with deportation notices served on both.[2] An expert estimated the factory could have produced cannabis worth between £1.15 million and £2.3 million a year.[2] Eleven other men and a woman arrested over the factory remained on police bail.[2]