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All change: how the Royal Mint is making the new 12-sided £1 coins www.theguardian.com
It’s known as the Long Store and at first sight this draughty building – with endless rows of plain cardboard boxes stacked neatly on shelving from floor to ceiling – could be any distribution warehouse in the UK.
Only discreet red stickers reveal the valuable contents of the boxes, which every day will be driven by fleets of armoured high-security vehicles from the barbed wire-ringed site. Each is loaded with 85,000 gleaming new 12-sided pound coins which go into circulation in the UK on 28 March and are systematically being transferred to a network of top secret “cash centres” across to the UK to await final delivery to banks and other issuers.
Here at the Royal Mint, near Llantrisant to the west of Cardiff, production has been ramped up to full capacity. Ten German-made vertical presses are working 24/7 to churn out the new coins which will replace the old, familiar round pounds.
At high pressure, they are striking the two surfaces of the metal “blanks”, producing 40 new coins every second – and 140,000 an hour. Quality control by humans and laser sensors aims to weed out any flaws, and the vast majority that make the grade are counted by machine and emptied into the polythene-lined boxes. Security is strict and metal detectors and scanners are in use for both staff and visitors.
Production of the 12-sided coins – a whopping 1.5bn of them – started in March last year and the Royal Mint is now halfway through the process, according to Scott Kuperns, its technical manager and counterfeit specialist.
The switch to the new coin has been prompted because the old round one has grown increasingly vulnerable to counterfeiters. The Royal Mint reckons one in 30 £1 coins is fake.
“Counterfeiters are becoming increasingly sophisticated” he says, against the noisy backdrop of one of the Mint’s coin press rooms – one room makes coins for circulation while the other turns out commemorative coins and medals.
“It can just be a man working in a shed or it can be more organised crime. Teams of experts who have analysed minting technology and material development. But after a lot of research and trials we have come up with what we believe is the most secure coin in the world.”
The cutting-edge coin, therefore, has a deliberately complex shape which makes it harder to manufacture and counterfeit. It has an image like a hologram that changes from a “£” symbol to the number “1” when viewed from different angles, while there is very small lettering on the lower inside rim on both sides, and what is mysteriously described as a patented “hidden high security feature”. In a further ruse to try to beat the counterfeiters, it has “milled” edges, with grooves on alternate sides.
Its bimetallic construction is similar to the existing £2 coin. The outer ring is gold-coloured nickel-brass and the inner ring is silver-coloured nickel-plated alloy. The reverse of the new coin shows the English rose, Welsh leek, Scottish thistle and Northern Irish shamrock emerging from one stem within a royal coronet – a design created by 15-year-old schoolboy David Pearce, who won a competition to create the image.
Behind the scenes, work is also under way for other new coins – a new Sir Isaac Newton 50p, a first world war aviation £2 and a Jane Austen £2, all entering circulation this year. The Royal Mint is also a major export manufacturer, making coins for around 60 other countries including Sri Lanka, Poland and the Czech Republic.
Despite the rise of card and contactless payments, coins remain popular and mintage figures are stable. There are currently nearly 29bn coins (of all denominations) in circulation in the UK, with a face value of more than £4bn.
Metal for all the coins is smelted on the site, and those going out of circulation are melted down and reused, a fate lined up for the old £1 coins which will cease to be legal tender on 15 October.
The Treasury has been urging savers to crack open their piggy banks, check behind the sofa and rifle through pockets for rogue £1 coins, before they become worthless.
Published Date:2017-03-02
