Essex Trading Standards has handed over to a national charity £10m worth of counterfeit goods, seized in raids at Ingatestone, Ongar and Loughton.

Karen Fulcher, Trading Standards Press officer said: "There are about 100,000 items to present to the Birth Defect Foundation."

Thursday's astonishing donation is probably the biggest of its type seen in the county.

Three machines which had been used by counterfeiters to sew internationally known brand names on to sports clothing will also be presented to the charity.

Karen said: "The machines were capable of being used to sew names on to 100,000 garments in a year."

Counterfeiters had been using Adidas, Nike, Versace, Calvin Klein and other home made internationally known name tags to sew on to clothing.

Trading Standards officers and police had been staggered by the size of the operation, especially at Ingatestone.

Compact discs, video and audio tapes were also seized in the raids.

Penny Stevens, Birth Defect Foundation Corporate Services Manager said: "This is one of the largest donations of its type we have ever received.

"We have facilities to remove all the names from the garments, along with branded buttons, and they are then resold.

''Items like the compact discs are completely recycled into compact discs again and the audio tapes and video tapes are completely cleaned."

The Cannock, Staffs, based charity was formed in 1991.

The trading standards press officer said: 'We are delighted to be helping the charity like this."

Converted for the new archive on 19 November 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.