February 25, 2014 – The Royal Mint has scooped The Wales Quality Centre’s prestigious Innovation Award 2013 for its revolutionary new high security coinage currency system. The Royal Mint’s Project iSIS – Integrated Secure Identification Systems – enables not just coins, but the whole cash cycle to be more secure, protecting the public, vendors, retailers, and the wider banking system.
iSIS is the work of The Royal Mint’s in-house technology team and involves the application of an existing security technology that has been proven over decades in other industries in products such as banknotes, fuel and perfume. For the very first time, this existing security has been successfully embedded into coins. The result is a new generation of low cost, high security, plated coin with multiple levels of banknote-strength security built in.
David Phillips, Chief Executive of the Wales Quality Centre said “The Wales Quality Centre is delighted to announce The Royal Mint as the winners of the 2013 Wales Innovation Awards. They fought off competition from other organisations that included General Dynamics, Biocatalysts and Welsh Water to claim the overall prize. Their entry was judged outstanding by the panel and their win adds to the continued success of the Innovation Awards by raising the profile of innovative organisations working in Wales, who are celebrated and recognised annually with these awards.”
iSIS is the culmination of a period of intense research and development by The Royal Mint’s in-house team, and has seen an investment of over £2m to date, with a significant amount more planned over the next couple of years as the iSIS technology is commercialised. iSIS is not a surface coating so it will not wear off over time. According to The Royal Mint iSIS will reduce costs by replacing expensive clad and homogeneous coins with a more affordable full-plated option. The mint’s aRMour full plated coins typically have 25 microns of plate and are proven to last 25 years.
Greg Clark, Technology Manager for The Royal Mint said “The Royal Mint iSIS team is absolutely delighted with the recognition it has received from the Wales Quality Centre with this award. We are already known as the world’s leading export mint, but iSIS confirms our place as leaders within our industry, as we continue to expand the boundaries of minting technology”.
The Royal Mint has been based in Llantrisant, Wales since its move from London in 1968, and currently employs around 850 staff. At over 1,000 years old, it is Britain’s oldest manufacturer.
In an interview The Royal Mint’s CEO Adam Lawrence talked about iSIS and what according to him are the challenges of the market and how to face them. You can read the interview here.
The Royal Mint has dedicated an informative section to its project iSIS.
And this is the website of the Wales Quality Centre.