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Tuesday, 1 July 2014 01:07 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}
Q: You were recently reappointed interim Chief Operating Officer. What will your main focus be right now?
A: Very much business as usual. De La Rue has been making a number of changes in terms of how we do business and modernising the business and investing heavily in our factories around the world and that continues. It’s really business as usual.
Q: Where will your travels take you next in the region?
A: In this region, I don’t know; probably to one of our customers. We are unable to talk very often about our customers I’m afraid.
Q: De La Rue has had a long relationship with Sri Lanka. Could you give me an overview of the company’s operations here and its history?
A: We opened the factory in 1987. Production started in 1986 but it officially opened in 1987.We employ a little over 300 people here and it is one of our major plants, and it’s a fantastic facility – state-of-the-art and very, very good.
Q: What kind of security printing do you engage in?
A: Here in Sri Lanka we just print currency and we also obviously print the local currency as well, which is well-known, and hence the joint venture, but there are about 20 other currencies that we do for other countries around the world. But De La Rue itself, although we only print currency here, we have other parts of our business elsewhere within the group. We are the largest passport manufacturer in the world too, and we also do various other security documents and products ranging from birth and death certificates and security labels. If you look at some high value goods, some of our labels prove that it is a genuine product.
Q: What are your plans for Sri Lanka in terms of new innovations to the business?
A: We’ve been modernising and upgrading the plant for the past couple of years De La Rue’s Director and Head of Operations David Donaldson has led the charge on that in terms of improving efficiency and productivity. The plant will very much keep that process going. We have invested well over $ 30 million in the last four years on expansion; more in capability than in capacity. We upgraded the equipment and so we can do much more specialised bank notes.
Q: What are the biggest issues you face in security printing?
A: I don’t think the issues are different from anywhere else that we manufacture notes. We have facilities in the UK and also a print-works in Malta and one in Kenya and very similar types of processes, highly secure in terms of physical security but obviously the product that we make has to be super-secure as well in order to frustrate counterfeiters. So the design of the note is very important but then the capabilities are very important in terms of being able to apply onto the paper as print the note – lots of security features that make it very difficult to imitate in a note.
Q: Have there been any new security printing innovations introduced in Sri Lanka by De La Rue?
A: I think everything that is really modern and the latest developments, we can do here now in Sri Lanka and there is nothing new that we need to upgrade for. We recently did the first De La Rue polymer bank note in the factory for Fiji and we hope to do a lot more. It’s the first one De La Rue produced anywhere, and our Sri Lanka factory was the one that did it. So polymer is obviously a different substrate and most bank notes are made using cotton-based paper. People often refer to it as plastic but it is a polymer and is much more durable and can take a lot of punishment in use.
Q: Can you tell me a bit about De La Rue’s own history?
A: De Le Rue has been around almost forever; we’ve been producing bank notes for 150 years but the company itself has been in business for over 200 years right now and the business is now best known for the production of currencies. In the last five years we have been involved in the production of currency for 150 different countries around the world. We are the largest commercial bank note printer in the world, in addition to being the largest passport producer in the world. So we’re a very big business, very international; the majority of the work we produce here is exported, as it is in our UK factories and other facilities, so we are very much an international exporting business.
Q: You revealed that you manufacture currency for several other countries as well in your Sri Lanka facility. What are the advantages of basing your business in Sri Lanka?
A: A well-educated, skilled work force. The geography is great in terms of location and in the servicing of our customers in the region, so it is convenient in that sense too.
Q: Working in partnership with the Government, what kind of support do you receive from them?
A: We work in partnership with the Government and the various ministries and that is very important to us that we have a good relationship with them and we want to see the business continue to grow and develop, and we see this area as being very attractive for us to do that. So we hope the partnership will continue to be successful for both parties – it has to be a true partnership that works for both sides – but I think it has been successful over the years.
Q: How does De La Rue view Sri Lanka in the coming years?
A: It one of our major plants and we expect it to continue to be so.
Pix by Lasantha Kumara
