Five supermarkets in Berlin accidentally received a shipment of bananas and cocaine on Monday.
Police in Germany's capital are describing the mistake as a "logistical error" fudged by drug smugglers, Reuters reported on Tuesday.
Market employees found boxes filled with nearly 300 pounds of the white powder just before the bananas were set out on the shelves, according to local law enforcement and customs detectives who spoke with Reuters.
The senior police official, who also oversees the drug investigation sector, said that he was shocked to make the discovery.
"We were, of course, surprised," Olaf Schremm told the press. "I don't know where the mistake was in the perpetrators' delivery chain."
The cartons holding the bananas were part of a shipment of 1,134 boxes which arrived by ship from Colombia to Hamburg. The goods were then transferred to the fruit wholesale business in Berlin, where workers discovered around 140 kg of coke in seven of the containers.
That much cocaine could go for around $8 million at black market value.
The seized boxes were presented to the media by police officers wearing bulletproof vests and masks over their faces.
Although this finding marked the biggest coke-smuggling discovery in Berlin in the past 15 years, officials told Reuters that drugs are hidden in shipments and transported from South America to Europe often.
"At the end of the day, it's beyond one's control," Schremm told Reuters, adding that authorities can't keep track of the thousands of containers that are housed in the port of Hamburg while they wait to be transferred to their respective destinations.
