What do the police do with confiscated contraband?

[gabsdot]

I'm watching a TV program about customs inspectors. They have just confiscated a lorry full of cigarettes.
I'm wondering what they do with all the stuff they confiscate. Is there a huge warehouse full of drugs and fags and green diesel somewhere?

Drugs and cigarettes get incinerated. Other confiscated items get sold at police auctions

They ask the courts for something called a forfeiture and destruction order which legally allows them to keep and destroy it.

Not the police but I remember HMRC, as they were then, sent seized cigarettes and tobacco from Bristol Airport to local power stations. The air around must have been reminiscent of Lambert and Butler the day after collection.