VENDING MACHINE INDUSTRY FIGHTS NEW £1 COIN

It is designed to be a counterfeiter’s nightmare, but it seems that would-be forgers are not alone in dreading the arrival of the new £1 coin. The attempt to spike a £45 million-a-year forgery racket will wreak havoc on parking meters, drinks machines and one-armed bandits, company chiefs claim.

The 12-sided coin announced by George Osborne in September will be made from two types of metal and, like the existing £2 coin, will be of two colours. It is designed to look like the classic threepenny bit last minted in 1970, but its shape and high-tech security features, designed to foil criminals, pose a headache, too, for the makers of coin-operated machines.

Bacta, the body that represents the amusement industry, believes that it could cost £100 million to adapt 350,000 fruit machines and poker terminals — a sum that cannot be passed on to customers because of strict rules governing the ratio between stakes and winnings.

The British Retail Consortium is worried that supermarket self-service tills will need to be adapted, while the Automatic Vending Association says that it will cost £72 million to adapt every coffee, snack and fizzy drinks machine.

“It was only in 2011 that we had to make changes for the new 5p and 10p pieces,” Jonathan Hilder, chief executive of the Vending Association, said. “What we’re saying to the government is we’d like a bit of help here. We’re making these changes to ensure that a coin of the realm is protected from forgeries.”

The Treasury wants to ditch existing £1 coins because of a surge in counterfeiting. It estimates that fakes make up 3.03 per cent of £1 coins in circulation, a proportion that has trebled over the past decade, accounting for a value of £45 million.

Government officials say that the 30-year lifespan of the existing design is much longer than usual for modern coins and that the “price would be high” if confidence deteriorated in pound coins.

	NBS (coinbooks.org) Web