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.

The animation is also used as the basis for approving the master shim. The secured online messaging system allows for design drafts, artworks and animations to be safely transmitted from the designer to the customer for corrections and approvals.

According to KURZ, the advantages of this innovation are optimised demonstration of the effects and the design’s visual impression, increased flexibility, speedy and secure data exchange and reduced travel costs. Indeed, it replaces the need for travel altogether in the current pandemic – but maintains the full capacity to interact for both the supplier and the central bank customer.

A positive side effect of the new digital process is the reduction of CO2, as travel and sample shipments are saved.

The digital data is also a good starting point for customers in their public relations materials, for example when creating a marketing campaign to accompany the launch of new banknotes. The animation is perfect for use in a video clip that explains to the end users how to examine the visual effects of the feature.

Based on the new digital process, KURZ was able to receive design and origination approvals from the Central Bank of Costa Rica for its new 10,000 cólones banknote, issued in October, which was the last in the country’s new series. The process was 100% digital – ensuring on-time finishing of the foil design and the timely issuance of the banknote.

Threads debut in legal tender note

In a separate example of KURZ innovation, it has now been able to reveal that the thread in Poland’s new 20 zloty commemorative banknote, issued last month to celebrate the former President, Prof Lech Kaczyński, is from its portfolio of KURZ THREADS. Launched early in 2020, this is the first use of the feature in a legal tender banknote.

The thread, with proprietary KINEGRAM COLORS® structures, is vertically divided into two colours. The inscriptions ‘NBP’ and ‘20 zł’ within the security thread are demetallised and interact, like the colours, with the overall banknote design.

Thanks to the relatively wide windows in the paper substrate (4.5 mm), the KINEGRAM® FLUX effect can display crosswise left and right movement effects. These KINEGRAM movement effects combined with two different colours make the thread easy to authenticate and communicate, but also hard to counterfeit.

Beyond the banknote reference in Poland, KURZ now offers a wide range of threads with a large palette of colour changes and movement effects. These allow the threads to be designed to complement the principal colours of each individual banknote or to match a surface-applied security feature for visual cross-reference.

They include threads with KINEGRAM® COSMIC, which stands for ‘metallic colour shift’. These offer a wide selection of possible colours, along with prominent colour shift, and can be combined with Flux movements, 3D images, microtext and nanotext, magnetic, IR and UV features and taggants.