Mexican drug cartels have built a methamphetamine production base in southern Africa aimed at the Australian and New Zealand markets, creating a second supply line that bypasses the Pacific transit route running through Fiji, Tonga and Samoa. That is the assessment published on 8 October by Islands Business, which drew on an Agence France-Presse investigation published on 23 September and carried by Yahoo.
Key facts
- Both outlets report that South African police raided a game farm near Swartruggens, a town two and a half hours north-west of Johannesburg, in May and found an industrial-scale crystal methamphetamine laboratory.
- Investigators told Agence France-Presse the lab could produce five tonnes a month, worth around US$1 billion wholesale in Australia.
- Thirteen people were arrested. Five were Mexican chemists who police allege were sent by the Sinaloa cartel, a Mexican crime syndicate, and who had entered on three-month tourist visas saying they had come to see South Africa’s wildlife.
- Agence France-Presse counted at least seven major meth labs found across southern Africa in two years, and reports 16 Mexicans arrested in South African lab raids since 2024.
- Investigators speaking to the same agency say the network exists largely to supply Australia and New Zealand, where meth sells for 65 to 100 times United States prices.
The tonnage, the US$1 billion valuation and the price multiple all come from unnamed investigators quoted by Agence France-Presse rather than from published official figures. The lab counts are the agency’s own tally. The only numbers attributed to a named official are those from Brigadier Devon Naicker, quoted below.
Why it matters in the Pacific
Islands Business notes that Australia’s drug-supply debate has mostly looked east, where narco-subs — low-profile, semi-submersible vessels built to carry tonnes of cocaine almost invisibly across open ocean — have been discovered, and where the transit route through Fiji, Tonga and Samoa is now dubbed a drug “superhighway” that has drawn the attention of the Australian Federal Police.
The outlet argues the new Indian Ocean line gives suppliers a back-up, so no single route or seizure cuts the flow, and that it lands at western and southern Australian ports and airports rather than the Pacific corridor where Australia has concentrated its policing.
What neither outlet reports is any meth seizure in Fiji, Tonga or Samoa traced to the African labs, or any comment from Fijian authorities. The argument is about Australian demand being served from a second direction, not about fresh traffic through the islands — and it cuts both ways for the region: a route that skips the Pacific is a route that no longer needs Pacific intermediaries.
Fiji’s own enforcement strain has so far centred on cocaine, a separate strand of the trade. Fiji Police this year named six persons of interest in a cocaine case, and moved to centralise drug exhibit storage after a missing-cocaine case.
Inside the Swartruggens case
Alongside the five Mexicans, Agence France-Presse reports two Mozambicans, a Zimbabwean and four South Africans were held, three of the South Africans members of the Afrikaner family that owned the game reserve. The agency says the family bought the farm in 2024 and that the parents had previously been before the courts over renting out land where the sedative mandrax, or methaqualone, was being illegally made for the local market. No convictions in the Swartruggens case have been reported by either outlet; the allegations are untested.
Police told the agency they believe the five began cooking crystal meth soon after arriving in March 2025. Naicker, head of the South African Narcotics Enforcement Bureau and drugs chief of the elite Hawks unit, said meth labs are almost always found on isolated farms within easy reach of major roads; the Swartruggens farm sits close to the N4 national route.
Tracing the drug to Australia
“Looking at whether the methamphetamine came from the Swartruggens laboratory because it went through the port of Durban, and the way it was packaged.” — Brigadier Devon Naicker, on an Australian case under investigation, to Agence France-Presse
Naicker said he could not disclose the methods used while that investigation continues.
Both outlets report a separate seizure in January, when a woman arriving at Sydney airport on a flight from South Africa was arrested with 39 kilograms of meth in her bags. Agence France-Presse gives her age as 32 and describes the drug as powdered. The Australian Federal Police confirmed to both outlets that it has identified increased targeting of Australia’s illicit drug market by Mexican cartels, but said it would not comment on cartels operating in South Africa, citing operational sensitivities.
The demand side is well documented: Agence France-Presse cites a 2024 assessment compiled with the US Drug Enforcement Administration finding methamphetamine is the most consumed illicit drug in Australia after cannabis. Islands Business adds that Australian police reported in 2024 that around 70% of meth seized was supplied by North American production sources, displacing Chinese networks that had served the market for three decades.
A wider African footprint
Labs linked to Sinaloa and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel have also been found in Nigeria and Kenya, Islands Business reports, while Mexican nationals have been arrested in Mozambique and others detained in Botswana have been extradited. Agence France-Presse says four Mexicans have been arrested in Nigerian lab busts this year, and dates the first lab bearing cartel hallmarks in South Africa to Marble Hall in 2020.
The two accounts describe the most recent major action slightly differently. Islands Business places it on a Limpopo farm in August; Agence France-Presse reports a raid at Musina, on the Zimbabwean border in Limpopo, where five tonnes of solvents, catalysts and reagents were seized. Both say it was carried out with the US Drug Enforcement Administration and the US Department of Homeland Security, agencies whose counterparts have also tested counter-drone technology on the Mexican border.
Nigeria’s drug agency told Islands Business that Mexican operatives set up a lab, train local cooks and leave, and that once the Mexicans were “flushed out”, local collaborators simply took over.
What Islands Business says should change
The outlet argues Australia cannot interdict its way out of the problem because the labs and shipping routes sit in Africa. It recommends an Australian Federal Police presence alongside South African counterparts, shared precursor and cargo intelligence with South African and Kenyan customs, and practical support for Mozambique, which it says lacks scanners and specialists. It points to the Indian Ocean Rim Association as a ready-made forum, and says intelligence must also target financiers and corrupt facilitators, citing West Africa, where cocaine seizures rose from about two tonnes in 2018 to more than 30 tonnes in 2025.
Those recommendations are the outlet’s own analysis, not policy announced by any government. This report is based entirely on the two published accounts above; no Fijian, Australian or South African official was interviewed for it.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the P2P method the cartels are using?
According to Agence France-Presse, as carried by Yahoo, the Sinaloa cartel uses the so-called P2P method, based on phenyl-2-propanone, which an investigator said was previously unknown in South Africa. Islands Business reports the method makes meth from bulk industrial chemicals rather than the tightly controlled cold-and-flu medicines older labs relied on, allowing manufacture at industrial scale.
How does cartel meth reach buyers once it lands in Australia?
Agence France-Presse reports that police in both Australia and New Zealand had previously established that local chapters of the Comancheros biker gangs were sourcing drugs from the Sinaloa cartel, putting distribution in the hands of established domestic networks rather than the cartel itself.
Why are the cartels producing in southern Africa rather than closer to Australia?
A security source told Agence France-Presse that South Africa is the “perfect place” to make methamphetamine because it has huge expanses to hide labs, global sea and air connections, and corruption, which the source said plays a big role. The agency adds that nearly a third of the country’s trade is with China and India, the sources of the restricted chemicals used to make the drug.
What did the Mexican men arrested at Swartruggens tell police?
Agence France-Presse reports the five told police they were blindfolded and taken hostage when they arrived in South Africa. An investigator poured scorn on that account, telling the agency they were provided with anything they wanted to make their stay comfortable.
