The prestigious Regional Banknote and ID Document of the Year Awards form part of the industry’s High Security Printing EMEA conference.

The Bank of England has issued its Annual Report for 2022. The key themes relating to banknote issuance and management were the completion of the polymer series of banknotes with the issuance of the £50 banknote, actions to safeguard access to cash and deposit services and the environmental impact of banknote operations.

Oberthur Fiduciaire has launched a technology for threads in the form of RELIEF™ – which offers striking bas-relief 3D effects in what the company terms a major advance in security features for threads and unlike anything else on the market.

A new security thread featuring micro-optics was launched at the Global Currency Forum by Portals. Called Motus, the thread is the first security product to be launched by Portals following its acquisition last year of the security features and thread business Fabriano from Fedrigoni.

2021 was a great year for the Royal Canadian Mint (RCM), despite the ongoing effects of the pandemic, with record sales, profits, and a healthy $78.9 returned to the Canadian government, compared with $20 million the previous year.

De La Rue’s sales fell marginally in 2021/22 – revenue (non IFRS) of £375 million and operating profit of £36.4 million were down 3.3% and 4.5% respectively on the previous year.

The inaugural Cash & Payments Sustainability Forum, which will take place 15-16 November in Scotland’s capital city, Edinburgh, will share best practice, promote cooperation and address specific environmental challenges and solutions in the cash and payments arena.

The construction of the Banco de España’s new printworks for IMBISA just outside Madrid – the first new state-owned printing plant in the EU in over 50 years – has now been completed, and work has started on moving in the new equipment.

The history of French banknote and security printer Oberthur Fiduciaire dates back 175 years, being founded by Francois-Charles Oberthur in 1842.

Koenig and Bauer Banknote Solutions has just completed a series of showcase events for customers called ‘Open House’. Structured as a morning of presentations followed by equipment demonstrations, the day was focused on the practical, the tangible and improving those elements of business that are within the control of K&B BNS.

In his review of the Global Currency Forum, Wolfram Seidemann, Chairman of the ICA, compared the priorities of the cash industry in the past with today. Then, he said, the key priorities were security, efficiency and quality of notes is circulation. Fast forward several years, and the priorities look very different now.

The official launch ceremony for a new security document printing facility has taken place in Entebbe in Uganda. It will be owned and operated by the Uganda Security Printing Company, which was set up in 2018 as a joint venture between the state-owned Uganda Printing and Publishing Corporation and Veridos, the German provider of integrated identity solutions.

Among the customary technical presentations and product launches at conferences, the one given by Komori at the recent Global Currency Forum on the topic of the metaverse was very much ‘out of the box’. Here Steve Craig of Komori explains what the metaverse is, and how Komori is looking at harnessing it for banknote production.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has issued its annual report for 2021-22. The backdrop for the year was India’s second and third wave of the pandemic, which affected operations.

After a three year gap, the Coin Conference returns this October to Amsterdam, in what will be the sixth edition of the event, and the only one of its kind to focus on coins as part of cash strategies in circulation from the perspective of currency issuers.

Nominations will be open on 8 June for the 16th round of the ‘Excellence in Currency: 2022 Coin Awards’, run by IACA (the International Association of Currency Affairs) and sponsored by Currency News.

Giesecke+ Devrient launched its Green Banknote Initiative earlier this year. At the Global Currency Forum, it followed this up with the presentation of the Green Banknote - a physical token of this initiative printed on Hybrid ADDvance®.

The Central Bank of the Republic of Argentina Argentina has showcased the designs of its new series of banknotes, in which the images of indigenous fauna and their habitats that feature on the current series will be replaced by famous Argentineans.

The Central Bank of Barbados has unveiled the designs of its new polymer banknote series, which will be introduced on 5 December, two days after it celebrates its 50th anniversary.

The primary focus of the 6th IBDC taking place in Dubrovnik, Croatia from 24-27 October 2022 is ‘Design Community Reconnect’.