February 2022 - The Passports Department together with a range of key experts involved in the production of the P-Series passport since 2014 were honoured at a Thank You lunch earlier today. Ashley Hannon, who was managing the Passports team at the commencement of P-Series production, as well as Walter Valeri from the Australian Passports Office who has managed DFAT’s personalisation program for many years, reflected on the P-Series journey.
The APO’s Walter Valeri was full of praise for the NPA Passports team and made a point of saying how much his team enjoyed being on-site and how friendly they had found NPA to work with.
“DFAT has enjoyed working with NPA so much – you’ve really supported us in responding to our requirements or taking feedback. DFAT’s move to working on-site at Craigieburn was very positive because it enabled us to work more closely together and be in communication quickly when it was needed,” says Walter. “On behalf of the APO, I want to thank all of you for the tremendous contribution. We’re looking forward to moving on to the R-Series!”
Ashley recounted the early period of the P-Series passport and the challenge of needing to control a range of variables in the manufacturing process, as well as coping with those variables that can’t be controlled.
“We had a few technical challenges in making the adjustment to printing the P-Series passport but after overcoming these initial hurdles we’d just started production on a summer day in 2014 that turned out to be 44 degrees,” recalls Ashley. “While we were still getting everything up to speed, grass fires swept into nearby farmland and we were ordered to evacuate!”
Despite these challenges, the P-Series was a highly successful project. In producing more than 15 million P-Series books across the last seven years, the quality of the books has been outstanding, with a number of small improvements being made from the N-Series.
“From the public’s perspective, we moved from a blue-black cover on the N-Series to a blue cover colour which was aligned to the colour of the Australian flag, Similarly we moved from a silver foil to a gold foil, so the appearance of the book was bolder and quite striking,” says Ashley. ”The passport is highly valued by Australians, it’s meaningful to them and a point of pride in being Australian, and it’s a credit to this team that the quality of the book supports that important role.”
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Success Through Adversity: In expressing his appreciation and thanks to the Passports team for their superb efforts in delivering the P-Series passport, Ashley Hannon reminded the audience that a life in manufacturing is never smooth sailing.