Banknotes

Transcript

Michele Bullock, Assistant Governor

The Reserve Bank actually is responsible for issuing Australian banknotes, but we're also responsible from – all the way from production through to circulation and then withdrawal and ultimate destruction of the banknotes, and the purpose of that is to ensure that the Australian public can be confident in the banknotes and use them in transactions and as a store of value.

It's only been the Reserve Bank's job since earlier in the 1900s. In fact, prior to Federation the commercial banks printed their own banknotes and then eventually that power passed to the Commonwealth and then eventually to the central bank.

Coins actually aren't printed by the Reserve Bank; coins are the responsibility of the Mint which is based in Canberra.

So the first thing about our Australian banknotes is they're plastic and this is quite unusual and it was the first time in the world really that a plastic banknote had been issued, prior to that banknotes were always issued on paper. And that actually is a very important security feature. It does two things. It means it's harder for people to reproduce a banknote on plastic and, in addition, they're much more durable, they last longer in circulation, so that's a really key thing about Australian banknotes.

The design of the banknotes is based on the plastic and it's also got security features in it. The first as I said is plastic, that's a very important thing so it should – if you scrunch it up it should spring back or if you try to tear it, it shouldn't tear easily. But there's also the clear window at the bottom of all the banknotes, and that shouldn't be a stuck on piece of plastic, that should be integral to the banknote.

There's a number of other security features as well. The printing needs to be – you need to see very, very sharp printing and in fact on every banknote there's this little tiny micro printing and if you get a magnifying glass out or if you have really good eyes you might be able to see it, it's very, very precise printing and you can't reproduce that in a counterfeit.

They are quite colourful and that's a very deliberate decision. For people with vision impairments who perhaps don't have very clear vision, the bright colours help them to distinguish between the banknotes. There's a number of other things which help them as well. All the banknotes are a slightly different size, they get longer as they get higher value and they've got big bold numerals on them as well, again to assist people with vision impairment.

There's around about 1.3 billion banknotes in circulation and that in total value is around about $61 billion.

Now counterfeiting isn't a problem in Australia and I think that reflects the fact that we've had such a secure banknote with the plastic banknotes since the mid 1990s so it's a long time. But it isn't a problem. However, we always want to make sure that we're keeping one step ahead of the counterfeiters. Technology these days, the price is coming down, it's getting easier to access this technology and what we want to do is make sure we just stay one step ahead.

So the banknote really is, I've often heard it said, the business card of the country. It's what people see when they come into the country, it's the first thing, so you want something that reflects your cultural heritage or history and in our case what we have on our banknotes from our 10 upwards is we have two people, a male and a female on each side of the banknote and those people have a story behind them, and when you look at the banknote you will see pictures which represent that person's story in our history.

The five dollar is a little different because it has Parliament and the Queen on it, so it more represents democracy, Australia as a democracy.

We started the research and development process for the upgrade with an extensive list of nearly 200 features that we'd gathered from all sources around the world: industry, research institutes, suppliers to the industry and started with that and then cut it back. We can't put 200 features on the note, we don't want to, so we cut it back to a very short list that we took forward into design.

In the design process we have two distinct parts, there's the concept design and the 'banknotisation' design. The concept design is where we look at the artwork, how we want it to look more general aspects; the 'banknotisation' design is where we actually integrate all the features into that and get the banknote to a level where its functional, has security and durability.

So the process starts with a plastic film, which is essentially some polypropylene that we melt, stretch, blow into a big bubble and then squash it back down to get a film.  So on top of that clear film we apply white coatings on both sides, obviously leaving out the bits where we want to have a window and that produces for us a banknote substrate sheet we can then put into the rest of the printing processes.

So on top of that, the white layers on the banknote sheet, we apply strong colours on both sides of the note, and this is done in very fine detailed print. It gives it the bold, vivid colours, it has built in security in terms of the fine detail and microprint that goes within that.

Within the top-to-bottom window, which is new on the series for us, we integrate a number of features in there, particularly stuff that goes in the foil that's transferred across.  It's a very complicated process that involves transferring that foil across with heat and pressure, somewhat akin to ironing it on, and that transfers those across to the banknote and you have them in the top-to-bottom window.

The next process we apply is the rolling colour effect. Again, this done partly across the window and across some of the coloured areas where we apply a thick layer of a coloured ink. And then we structure the way the pigments sit within that ink to get the coloured effects that you see on both sides of the note.

The way we structure the pigments within that rolling colour effect to give the artwork is that we apply a series of magnets on to the ink while it's still wet and that magnetic fields rotate the pigments within the ink and then we lock it in place with the UV lamp to cure that, and then we get the rolling colour effect in the design that we're after.

The intaglio print comes after that, which is a very traditional process used for many, many years all around the world in banknotes.  Applied on both sides of the note, it gives the note texture, gives the note body, something that really helps with the way people authenticate the note. They will often feel the difference between the note with or without intaglio.

On the new five dollar banknote, space was really a constraint. We were after a lot of security and one of the things that had to go was the second serial number. So we've still got one, consistent with the same sort of numbering formats we've used in the past so you can see the year of print that comes out of that, and we've also matched that against an invisible year of print which you can see when you hold the note under a UV lamp.

One of the last printing processes is to apply an overcoat over the whole note. This adds both durability and it helps with the slip characteristics of the note. So how it feels when you're counting it, the way the notes can slide against each other.

One of the final processes then is the tactile feature, the tactile dot, where we're not printing anything in this case. We're just actually hitting the film with an embossing stamp, it actually deforms it and pushes it out and you get the tactile dot that you then can feel on the note for the vision impaired. 

So in finishing, we take everything up to this stage and have banknote sheets. Then we have to cut it into the individual banknotes and making sure that's done consistently so you get the right height, the right length, the image in the right position and then it's put through a high speed machine inspection system that does quality checking on all the banknotes.

Once the notes have been through processing they get bundled into you know bundles of a hundred and bigger bundles of a thousand and they all get packed into containers with a sort of automated robotic system so then those containers have some 100,000 notes that get sent out to banks.

To replace all the notes in circulation we've needed to print around 170 million of the five dollar banknote.  Normally we'd not print that many in each year but it's the volume that we need to replace everything.

Coming to the end of the process, we've got to the stage now where we've incorporated a large number of new security features, some of the most advanced in the world, on to this new design. And you know where once we led the world in polymer banknotes, our view is certainly, this new design with the embedded features and the way we've designed it together, certainly puts us back at the forefront of polymer note technology in the world.

For a long time Australia's banknotes have incorporated cutting-edge security features that have made them among the safest in the world.

And to keep them that way, the Reserve Bank has developed a new $50 banknote.

You'll see many innovative security features in multiple locations on the banknote.

There is a distinctive top-to-bottom window that contains a number of dynamic security features.

Tilt the banknote and you'll see a Black Swan move its wings.

Inside the building at the bottom of the window is a number 50 that changes direction.

Turn the banknote over and in the top corner there's a prominent patch that changes colour in a rolling effect.

Both the new and existing $50 banknotes can be used in transactions.

The Reserve Bank is making Australian banknotes 'Clearly More Secure'.

See more at banknotes.rba.gov.au.