Hong Kong customs officers seized 600 million illicit cigarette sticks in the first three quarters of this year, the department chief has said as he revealed plans to roll out more advanced contraband detection equipment at additional border checkpoints to ease manpower pressure.

Commissioner of Customs and Excise Chan Tsz-tat told a radio programme on Saturday that the seizure amount in the first nine months this year nearly matched the 2025 annual total.

He said that of the 600 million sticks seized, 200 million were destined for other locations but were intercepted in Hong Kong after customs received intelligence.

“We have around 16,000 cases of illicit cigarette seizures that involved passengers who did not declare they were carrying over 19 sticks of cigarettes,” Chan said.

These cases are among the 18,000 illicit cigarette cases customs detected from January to September this year.

No serious drug cases were intercepted at the revamped Huanggang Port since it began operations last Monday, the commissioner added.

When asked whether customs operations at the revamped Huanggang Port were smooth following long queues amid crowd surges over the Chung Yeung Festival weekend, the customs chief said both passenger and cargo clearance were steady. “The bottleneck was not at customs checks. Customs clearance hall operations were quite smooth,” Chan said.

At the revamped Huanggang Port, vehicle clearance is handled through a “joint one-stop” clearance lane. Drivers first pass through a customs front kiosk before sharing their identity and biometric data at a machine that shares data with five government departments, including customs, across Hong Kong and Shenzhen for the driver’s clearance.

Should customs checks be deemed necessary, drivers would be notified at the customs front kiosk to drive to a separate clearance hall for checks.

To cope with increased manpower demand for the revamped Huanggang Port, the department has reassigned staff from other border checkpoints, cancelled staff members’ leave and hired a small number of retired staff to help man the newly opened land boundary checkpoint.

“As more people cross the border, our workload will only increase. Adding manpower may not be the only way to cope,” Chan said.

The customs chief said the department would turn to technology to introduce more advanced equipment to alleviate manpower pressure.

This would include introducing the active millimetre wave detector, a device to scan for contraband items hidden on a person’s body, at more land checkpoints in the future.

The detector uses a wave that is not invasive to the body and may reduce the need for body searches on passengers, according to Chan.

With the unprecedented joint clearance system, officials earlier said processing time at the revamped Huanggang crossing could be cut to five minutes from about 30 minutes.

Hong Kong residents who hold a valid mainland Chinese travel permit can use their Hong Kong ID cards interchangeably at the joint clearance channel for both outbound and inbound trips.

The crossing is expected to be able to handle up to 300,000 travellers a day. The Immigration Department said it expected about 100,000 people to use Huanggang Port daily during initial operations. It can also handle 15,000 vehicles a day.