Innovations from KURZ in Digitalisation and Threads

The emphasis on the recent round of IACA’s Excellence in Currency Awards, which were presented in October, was on innovations in response to the pandemic that will have lasting value. One such innovation was from KURZ in the form of its ‘Digital Design and Origination Approval Process’.

The design and client acceptance procedures for any secure document device rely heavy on client-supplier interaction. None more so than with diffractive devices, where the client may have some misgivings about committing to the costly and sometimes time-consuming mastering of the feature.

Hence KURZ’s introduction of a new digital process for design and origination approval, to get around the restrictions on travel and face-to-face meetings resulting from COVID.

For a design approval, the finalised design file, as well as supporting materials such as detailed effect visualisations, can be transmitted to the central bank by a secure messaging system. Once the design has been approved, a first master shim is produced. While previously, physical samples were manufactured to demonstrate the end product to the customer, KURZ’s digital alternative provides, it says, highly advanced, perfectly detailed digital animations – which illustrate to the customer precisely how a security feature produced with the master shim will look.