K&B BNS Open House Demonstrates a Clear Strategy

Koenig and Bauer Banknote Solutions (K&B BNS) 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.

Three themes ran through the whole day – modularity, sustainability and digitalisation.

Focus on design

K&B BNS’ opening focus was on security features, followed by the introduction of its banknote design software. With over 250 security features to choose from, the key remains to use features that are easy to identify and explain. If you can’t explain a security feature to somebody on the telephone, it probably isn’t a great feature.

Two features were discussed in detail – SUSI Flip™, which is used on the Solomon Islands $5 banknotes, and SUSI Optics®.

SUSI Flip uses two colours to make a third, creating complexity and challenges for the counterfeiter but which plays to the strengths of a Simultan Offset banknote press.

In contrast, SUSI Optics, currently printed on a clear polymer window, is created using three processes. The SUSI Evo (the new name for the Simultan Offset press) prints the high registered pattern. The NotaScreen adds a white covering, although this is optional. Finally, the OptiNota H applies the micro-lens foil. The three combined steps create a multi-colour micro-optics feature with over 20 possible effects, some of which can be viewed from either side of the note.

K&B BNS placed great emphasis on the need for designs, software tools, production processes and materials to be exclusive to banknotes. A banknote must be hard to counterfeit using commercial tools and materials. K&B BNS, of course, makes every process in-house. Alongside this goes the need for production efficiency, which is why K&B BNS produces layouts for machine-readability, production and interaction layers.

Since 2019, K&B BNS has worked with AGFA as a partner to create a streamlined software development and support service. AGFA’s Fortuna and K&B BNS’s ONE design software have been combined. One innovation resulting from the partnership is the ability of the software to create functional layout checks, a print ‘book’ and data integration easily and quickly.

The print book allows the printer to set up their presses more quickly and accurately. It includes plate separation, ink references, print tolerances, chablon layouts, zones of interest and descriptions and UV/IR simulations.

The software package consists of ONE Portrait, ONE Security and Asecuri. The latter includes pre-press process workflow, all in one from rip, distortion to imposition and proofing, the aim being to reduce manual operations to a minimum and to increase productivity.

Service

Service during the pandemic has led to an acceleration in new ways to provide support. While a customer community website and a portfolio viewer for individual customers may not be revolutionary, the development of visual service support has certainly been accelerated by the pandemic.

This was demonstrated by a ‘customer’ wearing a headset linked to a software on his phone being asked to go and get a coffee from the canteen. The audience watched as if in the customer support centre, and could both see and hear what the customer saw and heard and witness what the support staff could see, hear and say. It was a clever and highly effective demonstration.

Digitalisation

K&B BNS has been working to understand how digitalisation can enhance banknotes. Its ValiCash™ app is increasingly well known. Based on using Sound of Intaglio® to authenticate a banknote, this mobile app allows users to almost instantly verify whether it is genuine or a counterfeit. The technology works, of course, for any document printed with intaglio.

ValiCash™ app.

Somewhat newer is Smill™. K&B BNS has worked to ‘gamify’ banknotes, to turn them into a bit of fun for brands, individuals, anybody. The goal is to make banknotes relevant and usable. The Smill mobile app is downloaded, and a banknote is viewed. What happens next is fascinating and full of potential.

To illustrate what Smill does, at the end of the Open House, attendees were given a set of Laika specimen notes. When the Laika 01 denomination was viewed using the Smill app, a group photograph taken earlier in the day was revealed on the phone.

There are two options if you want to upload your own text or image onto a banknote:

• Public Smill: Your message travels with the banknote and connects you to many other people. Anyone holding the banknote in his hands can read your story or joke.

• Private Smill: Only the person who receives the banknote can read a private message. This keeps the personal content hidden from the public.

No user profile is required to use the app and content is created without asking for personal data.

The marketing and brand potential is enormous far outside of the banknote world. Equally, a central bank could load security feature information or a government public information onto banknotes, and even tourist messages for banknotes being supplied overseas.The Smill app - a new way of social interaction through banknotes.

Machinery: partnership and innovation

In the early presentations K&B BNS said its strategy was to create modular systems that are sustainable, with sustainability split between efficiency, energy, consumables etc. and product use.

The company is adopting a new naming convention for its presses (eg. SUSI Evo for simultan and SOI Evo for intaglio), and a wide range of K&B BNS presses were shown which were consistent with the strategy. A great deal of innovation, small and large, was evident. It was interesting how many had been developed with customers.

There was the NotaLamina Application Solution developed with the Banque de France to apply its EverFit® soil resistant solution. This machine takes sheets of paper, turns them into webs and then back into sheets sitting alongside the other banknote processes.

A NotaScreen II was demonstrated capable of making SICPA’s new SPARK Flow® product with its new generation PRIME, DIMENSION and CONFLUENCE variants.

The SOI Evo (intaglio press) uses a 3-3-3 print configuration to achieve optimal print stability, better process control and consistent plate length compensation. Control of engraved depth and high pressure is precise.

The press has a pressure and ink map giving printers better clarity on the print quality before looking at the actual sheet.

The OptiNota H shown had a mechanical foil cutting unit, a foil tensioning system to give a stable release, controlled release force and auto disposal (shred) of the foil – needed for applied patches, and a new curing system.

A prototype System for Automatic Sheet Handling (SASHa) robot for cracking open printed sheets and laying them up ready for the next process was also demonstrated.

Final word

Such a summary only touches on the day, but K&B BNS has a clear strategy and is highly focused. This Open House showed just how much innovation there has been since the last 2016 event around its machines, security features, design services, partnerships etc. There is a clear customer focus underlying all this.

Finally, K&B BNS has also developed a clear strategy around digitalisation and it will be interesting to see how this evolves.