Fledgling Security Printer Expanding

El Salvador has recently expressed interest in partnering with Vietnam’s Q&T Hi-Tech Polymer for its future bank notes after the nation’s ambassador to Vietnam, Ruben Omar Orozco Burgos, recently toured the Q&T facility. Currently, El Salvador does not have a domestic currency; instead, the U.S. dollar and Bitcoin are legal tender.

According to the company website, Q&T was founded in 2016 and is based in Hanoi. It is a Vietnamese-owned company that was founded by Anh Luong Ngoc.

During the late May visit, Burgos said, “I hope that one day Q&T can visit the bank note printing facilities in my homeland and even consider setting up a base there to supply materials regionally.” It wasn’t known at press time if El Salvador and Q&T had signed such an agreement, but Q&T has won competitive bids four times this year for contracts with other unnamed entities.

Q&T and Crane Currency met in Hanoi in December 2022 and signed an agreement in August 2023. Details of the contract between Crane and Q&T were not available at the time this article was written.

Crane Currency is based in Dalton, Massachusetts, and among other things, supplies the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing (BEP) with the security paper used for printing bank notes. The BEP contract is the result of a competitive bidding process; Crane offers its design and printing services worldwide.

Vietnam’s paper and polymer currency is printed by the National Banknote Printing Plant of Vietnam (NBPPV). The printing plant operates as a limited liability company and is owned by the State Bank of Vietnam. Vietnam issued bearer’s checks for large monetary transactions between 1992 and 2002. The designs were changed, and the older checks were demonetized about every five to six months to keep ahead of counterfeiters.

Vietnam began replacing its circulating cotton bank notes with those made of plastic polymer in 2003. It was claimed at that time that this move would reduce printing costs. Several domestic newspapers identified the son of the central bank’s governor as benefiting from the printing contracts. Today, the NBPPV has a working relationship with Q&T.
According to NBPPV Chairman Nguyen Duc Cuong, “(The polymer base meets) compatibility with our current printing systems and its high resistance to Vietnam’s humid climate are clear advantages.”

The company possesses both design and production capabilities, operating an advanced rotogravure printing press facility. On its polymer notes, the company provides a shadow image that is embedded rather than printed on the surface. Q&T also offers iridescent ink with color-shifting capabilities and employs a laser optical feature crafted with nanoscale precision.