Koenig & Bauer Invests in the Green Future of Currency

As noted in the April issue of Currency News™, in which we covered Koenig & Bauer’s annual results for 2022, Koenig & Bauer Banknote Solutions (KBBNS) is demonstrating its commitment to the future of currency through a range of new investments in processes, technologies and services.

One comes from the redesign of the Mödling assembly center in Mödling, Austria which, in 2022, was completely restructured to enable a radical realignment of the machine assembly and logistics process. The mission was to create an improved customer value stream, optimise the material supply process, and achieve significant improvements in efficiency, energy consumption, and environmental sustainability.

The redesign project was initiated in response to the growing trend for customers to request highly specific and customised machine configurations with shorter delivery times. The new central pre-assembly process for the offset, screen, intaglio, numbering and finishing machines has replace the previously somewhat scattered pre-assembly set-up and will greatly increase flexibility for assembling printing units, coating units, and other aggregates.

The new assembly platform has attracted great interest from industry associations and observers and the project was selected as one of the finalists in the 2022 Austrian ‘Factory of the Year’ award programme. CEO of Koenig & Bauer Banknote Solutions, Eric Boissonnas, commented that ‘this remarkable achievement attests to our commitment to banknote production excellence and our determination to enhance environmental sustainability and energy efficiency within the banknote industry.’

Giving new life to old machines

The company’s commitment to a sustainable future can also be seen in how it is giving new life to old machines. It has developed a dedicated platform to revalue and revitalise these by making them as good as new. The team at the Mödling Refurbishment Center modernises older and even end of life machines with new electronics and control components, restoring mechanical tolerances to optimal levels and effectively make ‘new’ out of ‘old’. More simple machine refurbishment activity can be conducted at the customer site.

Koenig & Bauer Banknote Solutions has also been working on a completely new banknote production platform which, Eric Boissonnas says, has been designed and developed to meet the changing requirements of the banknote community in terms providing the highest possible print quality and flexibility levels at a lower cost, while reducing ecological impact.

‘This new platform is the future of banknote printing and represents the type of innovation required to create a sustainable future for cash,’ he said. ‘The way we make banknotes must evolve in line with the way people access, use and distribute them. We are all actors in the cash ecosystem and we all have a contribution to make. We chose to make ours by investing in the future of currency’.

Moving into the cash ecosystem

KBBNS is also moving into that ecosystem with a family of cash innovation technologies designed to enable innovators and established actors to develop more sustainable cash solutions. Termed CUT® (Cash Utility Technologies), these so-called bridging technologies connect physical cash to the digital ecosystem and, says KBBNS, can result in quantum improvements in terms of the ecological footprint and the cost of cash in circulation.

They are accompanied by a new service called Cash Sustainability Analytics, to support central banks to develop a 360-degree health check of their national cash ecosystem.

This new initiative, which was covered more extensive in the company’s recently-published White Paper (see CN January 2023), is taking it beyond its traditional market space and next year the industry will get the opportunity to see more examples during the Koenig & Bauer Equinox 2024 world event in Lausanne, Switzerland during May and June. This event will also provide the world premier for the above-mentioned new banknote production platform.

New partnership for recovery solutions

Separately, but as part of the same mission to contribute to an even greener banknote production process, KBBNS recently announced a new partnership with Membraflow control systems to expand its range of solutions for dealing with wiping solution from the intaglio printing process.

KBBNS’ AquaSave II system 

 

The HIREC solution is based on ultrafiltration technology 

 

Membraflow has been in operation since the 1990s, and installs turnkey filtration plants and solutions for recycling industrial effluents around the world. For the banknote industry, it offers HIREC®, which was jointly developed with Oesterreichische Banknoten- und Sicherheitsdruck (OeBS) and claims to enable up to 97% of spent wiping solution to be recovered and re-used in the printing process without any further treatment.. Customers include the printworks of Australia, Austria, Greece, Kazakhstan, Spain and Ukraine.

Under the new partnership, the HIREC technology will complement the AquaSave II equipment from KBBNS to offer an alternative sustainable solution with an ultrafiltration technology, enabling printers to choose between two state-of-the-art recovery systems for wiping solution.

‘This new collaboration will enable a more harmonious development of green solutions while maximising the benefits for our customers,’ commented Véronique Nery, Product Manager, Environment Protection at KBBNS.