Calais migrants

Fruit supplier A Gomez claims it has lost as much as £350,000 as a result of the migrant crisis.

The company is now calling on the government to increase security at ports to prevent further damage to produce, as well as injury to the migrants themselves, according to the Daily Express.

In the latest incident last week, Gomez called police to open a lorry of Spanish peppers, where they found 26 migrants inside. It followed an unrelated discovery two hours earlier of another lorryload of 26 migrants in Dartford.

Gomez managing director Jim Parmenter said that incidents of that sort had risen since French authorities dismantled the Calais Jungle camp.

He told the Express: 'We immediately call the police every time we realise there are migrants in the lorries, but many get away. We see them hopping out just before the lorry gets to the depot and they run across the fields.

“Every time we have to destroy the produce, which yesterday would have cost us between £25,000 and £30,000, which we just accept now because it happens so often.

“But what we’re really concerned about is people sneaking into Britain unchecked who don’t get caught. It’s a serious security threat - we don’t want something like Brussels to happen because of it.

“I’m calling on the British government to increase security at all ports, otherwise something bad will happen.”

Parmenter, whose company ranked 20th in the FPJ Big 50 2016 with a turnover of £140 million, told the paper that the government did enhance security at ports a year ago, which brought a reduction in stowaways dor about six months. But recent incidents have taken the problem to unprecedented levels.