Polymer appears to be something of a ‘thing’ in this issue. So, having heard from one established and one emerging polymer substrate manufacturer – De La Rue and Spectra Systems respectively – it seems only fair to hear from the second established manufacturer, CCL Secure, who has provided an end of year summary for GUARDIAN™.

De La Rue appears to be enjoying a rebound following multiple new contract wins and growing demand for banknotes.

As part of its centenary anniversary celebrations, Komori has produced a house note, The Phoenix 2023. This note celebrates and brings to life Komori’s concept of ‘Power to the Print – Technology that Empowers’.

This year’s prestigious Regional Banknote of the Year Awards for Asia were presented at a special ceremony during the High Security Printing™ (HSP) Asia conference earlier this month.

The Bank of Japan and the Finance Ministry have announced that the redesigned 10,000, 5,000 and 1,000 yen banknotes will enter circulation on 3 July 2024, which marks the first update of the notes in around two decades.

Currency News™ spoke to Mr Junya Shimada – Executive Operating Officer and Group General Manager – about the company’s foundations, its current focus, its philosophy and how it plans to leverage this to go forward in an ever-changing social and technological landscape.

Hueck Folien, a family owned company based in Baumgartenberg, Austria has been supplying security products – initially security threads, followed by holographic/diffractive stripes – to the banknote industry for 35 years.

Spectra Systems Corporation has agreed to buy security printer Cartor Holdings in a deal worth up to £10.5 million. It has described the move as a strategic acquisition to bolster its position in the polymer banknote substrate market.

In 2023, we decided to drop Industry Watch – the quarterly review of the share performance of listed companies in our sector – and provide an annual summary instead.

The Hologram Image Register, established by the International Hologram Manufacturers Association (IHMA) to help safeguard hologram copyright and underpin the use of holograms in secure documents and products, has been extended to include all optically variable (or active) features, and relaunched as the Security Image Register.

In November 1993, the first President of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev, signed a decree ‘On the introduction of the national currency of the Republic of Kazakhstan’. Following this, the tenge became the official currency of the country.

The Central Bank of the UAE has issued a new 500 dirham banknote – the fifth in its new all-polymer series, which has been progressively rolled out since 2022.

At the awards ceremony held during the gala dinner at the Mint Directors Conference in Ottawa last month, the winner of the Best Circulating Coin category was the Royal Australian Mint (RAM) for the $2 Honey Bee coin, issued in 2022 as a joint collaboration with the Honey Bee Industry Council to mark the bicentennial of the establishment of the bee industry in Australia.

The International Association of Currency Affairs (IACA) held a webinar recently to discuss how sustainability is, and can be, incorporated into tenders by central banks. Purchasing power is, of course, a powerful lever for achieving policy goals.

Bank Al-Maghrib has issued a new coin series as part of its latest round of currency updates. Alongside new 10 and 20 centimes, and ½ dirham, 1, 5 s and and 10 dirham coins, an updated 100 dirham banknote has also been issued as the first in a new note series.

Established in 2020 to support national law enforcement authorities in their efforts to fight financial and economic crimes and aid international cooperation, Europol’s European Financial and Economic Crime Centre (EFECC) has recently released its first threat assessment on the matter.

Ibrahim Stevens has become Governor of the Bank of Sierra Leone. He has been First Deputy Governor since July 2014, and succeeds Kelfala Kallon.

Bank Note Paper Mill India Ltd (BNPMIL) has recently celebrated its Foundation Day.

META Materials Inc, a developer of high performance functional materials and nanocomposites which acquired security feature specialist Nanotech Security Corp in 2021, has announced details of a restucturing plan that will see it focus on core business lines that are either generating revenues, or expected to do so in the near future.

The Intergraf Currency + Identity Conference and Exhibition took place from 18-20 October in Bilbao, Spain. The Bilbao Exhibition Centre hosted this year’s 940-plus participants from the two branches of the industry, of which more than 170 were from central banks, government and law enforcement, along with 107 exhibitors.