Officers at Dubai Customs have seized 234,000 tramadol tablets concealed in a shipment of towels.
The customs service said on Sunday that officers in Jebel Ali and Tecom had detected unusual variations in the shipment upon scanning it.
Further inspections revealed a cache of the painkiller concealed inside.
The shipment came from an Asian country, Dubai Customs said, but it did not identify the country, nor provide any further information about the seizure.
Ahmed Musabih, director general of Dubai Customs and chief executive of the Ports, Customs and Free Zone Corporation, said Dubai has become an international model in how to tackle drugs, their associated risks and health hazards.
Rashid Al Suwaidi, acting director of sea customs management, said Dubai Customs remains committed to protecting society from the harmful effects of addiction to prohibited drugs.
The department focuses on training and equipping its staff with advanced technologies to detect smuggling attempts, irrespective of the diverse methods employed by smugglers, he said.
Dubai Customs deploys state-of-the-art measures to counter smuggling, including early warning systems to identify suspect shipments, X-ray detection, and specially trained K9 dog units.
For example, in September last year, a Dubai Customs task force foiled a plot to smuggle more than 200,000 doses of narcotics into the country.
The haul was valued at an estimated Dh6.2 million.
Unusual smuggling attempts - in pictures
