Ukraine among World’s Top Sixty Security Printers

The state security printing combine Ukrayina, which is controlled by the Finance Ministry, is now eligible to participate in international tenders to produce passports, postage, and excise duty stamps. Last week it commissioned a new printing line and is now on a par with the world’s leading manufacturers of these products.

According to Ukrayina director Anatoly Shevchuk, this became possible after the company launched a printing complex with the intaglio printing process for the production of securities and bills with advanced security features. Until now, only the National Bank has been using this technology to print money. From now on Ukrainian passports and stamps will have as much protection from counterfeiters as dollars and euros. Shevchuk says that this equipment carries a hefty price tag of 3 million euros. According to Finance Ministry department chief Serhiy Makatsariya, the combine paid for it out of its own coffers and didn’t take a penny from the state budget.

The new line consists of a printing press and an assemblage of equipment that includes a cleaning system and a device for machining printing rollers. After the Ukrayina combine director and Serhiy Piven, a representative of the Swiss company KBA-Giori that manufactures and sells such equipment worldwide, pushed the start button, the press began sending out sheets with a new series of postage stamps — the first product that the combine is producing with the new technology. Ukrayina will receive orders for new passports and excise duty stamps only after the Interior Ministry approves their designs and places a government order, which should happen soon, according to Shevchuk.

Ukraine can benefit from this new technology in two ways. First, it can expect to win tenders and channel earnings from new contracts into the state’s coffers. Second, new excise duty stamps will be much more difficult to forge, and the budget will stop losing money that ends up lining the pockets of counterfeiters. Shevchuk revealed some secrets to the journalists: if you bend a stamp where it has a rough surface and rub it on a white paper sheet, it should leave a faint trace of paint. Paper money can be checked for authenticity in the same way. The Ukrayina combine will not be printing money, but will stick with its traditional products: passports, education diplomas, traffic police documents, excise stamps, postage stamps, stocks, and other securities. Notably, not all of them will be produced using the new technology. Everything depends on how popular every product is with counterfeiters and on its current security features.

As Serhiy Piven told The Day, the Ukrayina combine now ranks among 60 leading international manufacturers of high-quality securities. Perhaps now that Ukrainian products will be protected from pirates, they will win recognition from the international community, and Ukraine will have a chance to sell not only raw materials on the Western market but also readymade products protected by high-quality excise duty stamps.