7 February 2020 - Note Printing Australia is honoured to receive Central Banking’s Currency Services Award for 2020. The results were published on the Central Banking website which included other award categories including Governor of the Year and Central Bank of the Year.
The Currency Services award is in recognition for NPA’s contribution to the BIM (Banknote Infrastructure Modernisation) Project. To prepare for the new polymer series of Australian banknotes, the Reserve Bank of Australia embarked on this program to update its banknote infrastructure. The BIM program looked at end-to-end banknote logistics, including standardised banknote containers; Note Printing Australia (NPA) processes in Finishing; and banknote storage and distribution at an automated Reserve Bank site (the National Banknote Site).
The Central Banking Award judges were impressed with the effort and engagement Note Printing Australia has had with the Note Issue department which they described as “a national infrastructure upgrade”. The panel asserted that “data is becoming more crucial to successful cash management and NPA has invested heavily to upgrade its own systems to improve its offerings to its clients. As a result, the RBA now has more ownership and control thanks to real-time data provided by NPA”.
There were valuable discussions between the Bank and NPA to agree on when and how the data would be delivered. NPA conducted a significant amount of work on its information technology systems to deliver the agreed outcomes. The work focused on integrating BPS2000 data with barcode data gathered by the robot as it packs each bundle into the Reserve Bank containers.
The changes have produced a very efficient system for the Reserve Bank and NPA that provides the ability to track and trace banknotes, as well as delivering the information accurately and quickly.
“Working closely with our customer, the RBA’s Note Issue department, carries many benefits for NPA and our participation in the BIM project is another example of how this level of collaboration delivers mutual benefits,” says NPA CEO Malcolm McDowell.
This is the first time Note Printing Australia has received a Central Banking Award.