Pseudoephedrine can be extracted from a medicine widely available in China called ContacNT - with 223g of the pink, yellow and red granules from 1000 capsules sold as a "set" for between $8000 and $10,000 on the black market.
And according to the Crown, an "extraordinary volume" of pseudoephedrine was moved around Auckland by the individuals, each with different alleged roles, identified through Operation Ghost.
Bugged phone conversations, mainly in Mandarin and Cantonese, and covert surveillance will dominate the evidence presented to the 12 jurors.
But none of that would exist if not for the double life of Joe Arama.
Under this assumed identity, the undercover officer was rubbing shoulders with Auckland's criminal fraternity, immersing himself in the underworld to build his own credibility and gain the trust of his target, Felix Lim.
One recorded conversation, in May 2013, read to the court shows he was successful, said Johnstone.
"I'm going to see a guy, how about the pink stuff that Alan's got?" Arama asked Lim. "How much for five?"
Johnstone said they were talking about five sets of pseudoephedrine, which it seemed was half the amount that Lim would normally sell.
The answer from Lim was $46,500.
Detectives listening to the phone call were not interested in simply catching Lim. They saw this as an opportunity to identify others higher up the chain.
After speaking with Arama, Lim was straight on the phone to his supplier.
"Someone asked me about red wine, half a bottle."
The supplier's name is suppressed, but the police also started listening to his phone calls.
"Felix is taking five friends to yum cha," the deal broker said to someone later identified as Van Tran, who gave his blessing to the deal.
Johnstone explained this to the jury as the police "working their way up the tree". And Tran was sitting at the top.
Arama and "Ants", another special duties officer, handed over $46,500 in cash and were given nearly 1.1kg of pseudoephedrine in five snaplock bags - enough to make methamphetamine worth $330,000 at street level.
"Clearly, they were not talking about yum cha," said Johnstone.
The police kept listening and watching, learning more and more about Tran and his drug-dealing empire.
He sold pseudoephedrine in bulk to wholesalers with their own supply networks, but kept his "hands clean" by using lieutenants to keep his stockpiles safe and deliver packages on his instructions.
One of those lieutenants was Zigeng Ma, the first defendant on trial this week, who has already pleaded guilty to 12 charges of supplying pseudoephedrine but denies seven other counts.
"I make no bones about it - he's denying offences he thinks he can get away with, not denying ones he can't," said Johnstone, a point later rebutted by Ma's counsel Jonathan Hudson.
"He's accepted culpability for charges backed up by evidence," said Hudson.
"It's not for Zigeng Ma to prove his innocence."
Other alleged Tran helpers on trial are his relative Xijin Xu and Jiu Mei Zheng, who ran the mah jong den he frequented.
Around 5.5kg of pseudoephedrine was found in a suitcase at Zheng's premises but her lawyer, Gary Gotlieb, said she had no knowledge of what was inside.
Others who helped Tran, like Ziyang Ma and Yoke Lee, have already pleaded guilty to their part.
Three others on trial - Hao Jiang, Zi Tong Li and Hau Phan Lam - are alleged to be wholesale customers of Tran.
Peter Kaye, on behalf of Li, whom he identified to the jury as the man with the "Beatle-like sort of haircut", queried whether his client had control of drugs, even knew it was drugs, or whether it was really him recorded on the phone.
"All the way through the [transcript book] it will say Li, Li, Li ... but there is a very real issue about who is on the phone."
One of the most striking features of the Operation Ghost trial, according to Johnstone, is the fact that the "boss", Tran, is not in the dock.
He's pleaded guilty to numerous pseudoephedrine charges, including smuggling one of the biggest shipments ever discovered in New Zealand.
Surveillance photographs show Tran giving a blue van to an associate, Da Wen Shao, a woman - whose name is suppressed - and a customs broker called Mosese Uele.
On October 3, the van was driven into Uele's customs-bonded premises at Auckland International Airport and left overnight.
Police covertly broke into the warehouse in the middle of the night to discover the van held boxes full of cornstarch.
"The real thing," said Johnstone.
However, a few days later, police followed the van to two residential homes in Auckland, which turned out to be safe houses for Tran.
Around 205kg of pseudoephedrine was found at one address, 46.5kg at another.
Johnstone said the smuggled pseudoephedrine from China was switched out with the "dummy consignment" of cornstarch destined for Tonga, inside Uele's freight-forwarding premises at the airport.
Sold by the "set" for $10,000, the cache would be worth more than $11 million.
"And no one would be any wiser," said Johnstone.
If not for the man called Joe.
