While the companies we feature in Industry Watch are being directly affected by COVID-19 trends and issues, they are also subject to market trends. COVID-19 has disrupted global economic stability – raw materials, energy and labour are all in short supply, and inflation is on the rise.

The digital world has been with us for over 20 years, and it has brought significant benefits, usually related to convenience, choice and cost. Despite that, there are many examples of physical products that are recovering lost ground and increasing sales.

The Dutch National Bank (DNB) spoke at the recent European Cash Cycle seminar (ICCOS) about the McKinsey study commissioned to consider the cash infrastructure that the Netherlands will need for the next 10 years.

The Bureau of Engraving and Printing (BEP) has submitted its fiscal year 2022 budget request to Congress. The main component of the $1.9 billion requested funds is for special projects. Chief among them is $897 million for the Replacement Production Facility in Beltsville, Maryland.

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has made progress in 2020 with introducing and updating new systems to help with its cash management, according to its recently published annual report on cash operations.

At the latest count a third of all banknotes contain a diffractive feature, in the form of a patch, stripe or thread, 327 to be precise. According to Frank van der Horst of the DNB in his presentation at the recently-concluded Holography Conference, the feature is the second best in public recognition terms after watermarks – which makes one wonder why the other two thirds of banknotes don’t use one!

The Bank of Mexico has issued a new 50 pesos, the sixth and final note in its new G series. The front of the new note shows the foundation of Tenochtitlan, the capital of the Aztec empire which, according to legend, was established by the Mexica tribe in the place where they found an eagle devouring a snake.

There is no longer any doubt that cash as a means of payment is declining – not just in relative but, increasingly, in absolute terms. The recent high demand for banknotes as a store of value only masks the reduction in their use for transactions.

The value of cash in circulation (CIC) in Uganda grew by 5.6% in 2020/21 to 6.03 trillion Ugandan shillings. Of this, banknotes grew by 6% to 5.83 trillion shillings, and coins by 2.65% to 193 billion shillings.

The National Bank of Romania has issued a new 20 lei banknote. It is intended to fill the gap between the 10 and 50 lei notes, and to honour a woman for the first time on a circulating note – Ecaterina Teodoroiu, a heroine of World War I.

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has announced Giesecke+Devrient (G+D) as one of the three winners of its Global CBDC Challenge, concluding the first phase of MAS’ study to explore possible retail CBDC solutions.

Hard on the heels of the announcement of a multi-million pound contract to supply Single Note Inspection Systems to India, Cash Processing Solutions (CPS) has announced two further major new contracts.

Sales for De La Rue for the first half of 2021/22 increased by 0.9% to £179.2 million, compared with the first half of 2020/21, according to its recently published interim results. Adjusted operating profit increased by 13.4% to £17.4 million.

Banknote holograms were winners in three of the five categories in the Excellence in Holography Awards 2021 organised by the industry trade body, the International Hologram Manufacturers Association (IHMA).

The Bank of Canada (BOC) has a Currency Inventory Management Strategy (IMS) based on its high-speed sorters that capture the image of every banknote, including the serial number, along with the date the banknote was created, shipped from the central bank’s distribution sites and returned to them.

The EMEA Cash Cycle Seminar (ICCOS) was again held in a virtual format at the start of November. Despite this, the event attracted nearly 200 registrations based in around 40 countries and representing 77 different organisations.

Koenig & Bauer Banknote Solutions (K&B BNS) has launched an app that is described as bridging the gap between the physical and the digital. Known as ValiCash™, the app not only helps identify but actually authenticates high security documents as well by scanning the document and giving either a ‘Pass’ or a ‘Fail’ response almost instantaneously.

As noted in the recently published special report ‘Cash: A Roadmap to Sustainability’, there is an environmental cost to the removal and disposal of banknote waste during production and at their end of life.

Australia is often touted as one of the countries moving the fastest to becoming a cashless society. Whilst longer-term projections and data on payment habits support that view, recent figures from the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) and the Royal Australian Mint (RAM) indicate the opposite over the last year, albeit the (hopefully) one-off consequence of COVID.

Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) has confirmed that it will trial a run of ‘a few hundred million pieces’ of the 1,000 piso on polymer during the first half of 2022.