The Caribbean – A Celebration of SAFEGUARD Polymer

Over the course of the last four years, four currency series in the Caribbean have converted to polymer – starting with the East Caribbean dollar in 2019, followed by Trinidad and Tobago in 2020, then Barbados in 2022 and, most recently, Jamaica this summer.

At the High Security Printing (HSP) Latin America conference in the Bahamas in June, Gareth Evans of De La Rue – the supplier of the SAFEGUARD® substrate and the designer and printer for all four series – took delegates through the rationale, the implementation and the results to date of polymer in the region.

The Caribbean comprises 33 political entities (including 13 sovereign states, 12 dependencies and 7 overseas territories). Between them they cover an area of more than 240,000 km2 comprising 700 islands, islets, reefs and cays. The combined population is 44 million. There are 11 central banks with 10 national currencies and one common currency serving 18 of the states and territories. The others use the US dollar (or, in a couple of cases, the euro).