IN Groupe Acquires Portals’ Italian Security Business

IN Groupe, global specialist in identities and digital services and owner of the OVD developer SURYS, has announced that it has signed an agreement with Portals, the UK supplier of security features and, until recently, banknote paper, for the sale of its security components business. Based in Bollate in Italy, the business was acquired by Portals from Fedrigoni in 2021.

The sale of the Italian part of the business is the latest chapter in Portals’ story. Having taken the business out from parent De La Rue in 2018, it experienced strong head winds and saw a significant adverse impact on its banknote paper business. It became clear that the change in the fortunes and priorities of De La Rue, still its largest customer, and the rising input costs, specifically of energy, set against the increasingly price competitive banknote paper marketplace, meant that its banknote paper business at Overton was no longer viable.

After plans for an orderly wind down of Overton were triggered in July 2022, Portals announced the sale of assets from Overton in the same year. These assets, which included pulping, papermaking, surface applications and finishing, had received significant investment, with over £50 million spent over the previous 10 years and £25 million since 2018 alone.

In November 2021, Portals completed the acquisition of Fedrigoni’s security business. Fedrigoni is one of the leading European producers of specialty papers and high value-added products for packaging, graphics and self-adhesive labels. The security business, then known as Fabriano, specialises in security threads along with diffractive and other foil-based security features for banknotes and passports.

In May 2022, Portals unveiled a new thread - Motus™ - at the Global Currency Forum in Tarragona, Spain (see CN May 2022). It was the first security product to be launched by Portals following the acquisition. At the time, Portals placed high expectations on Motus, signing an exclusive development and distribution agreement with Swedish-based micro-optics specialist Rolling Optics. The expectation was that Motus would offer central banks an alternative to Crane Currency’s MOTION® when specifying threads with movement.

Just two months later, however, came the news that contractual arrangements between De La Rue and Portals were being severed, and hence the closure of the paper side of the business.

According to Portals’ CEO Ross Holliday, ‘in the 18 months since Portals acquired the security components business from Fedrigoni, we invested significantly in new product innovation and commercial initiatives, which has in particular resulted in the successful launch of our first new product under Portals ownership, Motus, only six months after we took the helm. Following our stewardship, we are pleased that IN Groupe, with its strong international reputation, wants to acquire this business based on the value of its technology and the strength of its reinforced management team. We know that IN Groupe are a strong pair of hands to navigate this business into the next phase of its growth.’ 

IN Groupe (formerly known as Imprimerie Nationale) is a French-headquartered, government-owned, global specialist in identity and secured digital services, serving more than 130 countries in the world. In addition to its solutions dedicated to legal and professional identity security, IN Groupe develops and sells leading-edge security components for identities and banknotes through its subsidiaries SURYS (optical components), which it acquired in 2019, and SPS (electronic components).

SURYS already offers a number of diffractive and nano-structured optical features, available as patches and stripes, for both paper and polymer banknotes. They include the Alphagram™, as used for the patch on the first euro series, the colour shifting zero order device DID™, the Plasmogram™, based on plasmonic technology, with a variant for polymer and Moov™ an animated colour shifting features based on micro- and nano-structures. The Moov technology also underpins the company’s TriSTAR™ range of recently-launched security threads. Banknote references include the Philippines, Sudan, Poland and Kazakhstan, among others.

According to SURYS CEO Frederic Trojani, ‘this acquisition will increase our expertise and capability to develop new innovative security features to address the identity and banknote markets, including threads, foils and patches. We are proud to welcome our Italian colleagues to serve even better our worldwide customers’.

Two years ago, the company announced a €3.5 million investment to develop new solutions and expand its activities in the banknote sector, growing this business to match its passport business, which at the time accounted for 50% of sales.

The acquisition is part of the implementation of IN Groupe’s Digital Odyssey 2025 Plan. The complementary nature of the Bussy-Saint-Georges (France) and Bollate (Italy) sites will, says IN Groupe, strengthen its product portfolio to meet the needs of the euro and Eurozone export markets.

The transaction is expected to complete during the first half of 2023, subject to customary approvals.