The art of 'making' money
Ever heard of De La Rue? Mostly unlikely. Well, this is the largest fully integrated commercial banknote printer and passport manufacturer. A British company, it traces its origins way back to 1821 when it started off as a stationery and printing company. Then it started making playing cards, graduating then to postage stamps and eventually in 1860, it started printing bank notes. It has since then only been growing stronger, where on the way, he bought out other bank note printing companies, making it a much larger force to reckon with. In recent years De La Rue has been involved in the production of over 150 national currencies, and passports or identity systems for over 65 countries.
De La Rue designs the notes and provides them with high security. On a single note, there are usually at least 25 security codes of which some are announced to the public for identification while others are the Govt. One of the aims at every stage of note making is to ensure that the note is as difficult as possible to counterfeit. Some images are engraved by hand into metal plates, whilst others are created using a Computer Aided Design (CAD) system and are drawn onto film by a laserbeam. When finished, the images are duplicated many times onto printed plates ready for the presses. Specialised inks used to produce the notes are also manufactured on site; approximately 85 are required for the four denominations.
The challenge while making notes for mints and companies like De La Rue is that cost has to be low while it remains impossible to make counterfeits. So it cannot make a note which looks like a theater ticket, the design has to remain durable, be secure and look good, mainly trustworthy too. Also while designing, the mints remember one important aspect – notes are usually folded into half thus the security strip is never placed in the middle. They use engraved images in uncommon shades, which look trustworthy and are very hard to fake with colour photocopiers.
The business of making money is tough but equally tough is this art of printing money!