Inside Europe’s Largest State-Owned Banknote Printing Facility

In the December issue of Currency News™ we ran an article entitled ‘Reports of the Death of Cash are Greatly Exaggerated’, paraphrasing Mark Twain’s immortal words in response to reading his own obituary. In it, we mused over how widescale reports of the death of cash are at odds with numerous investments around the world in banknote production and distribution.

One such example is the Central Bank of the Republic of Türkiye (CBRT), which has executed a comprehensive overhaul and upgrade of its Ankara-based printworks, with more investment in the pipeline for a new printworks and cash centre.

As regards the recent upgrade, the project was remarkable on a number of counts. Capacity was increased with the installation of two new printing lines from two separate suppliers, the first of which has achieved record-breaking results in terms of machine uptime, and the second of which was completed in only ten months.