INTERVIEW WITH CRANE CURRENCY CEO DEFALCO

AS A LONGTIME tech entrepreneur, Stephen DeFalco knows what it takes to make money. As CEO of Crane Currency, he leads a company that makes money making money - the banknotes used by countries all over the world.

In an age when credit cards, mobile payment systems and cryptocurrencies might seem to be giving paper a run for the money, cash remains king. Crane Currency, a New England company founded more than 200 years ago, is among a handful of global players serving the 184 countries that issue banknotes.

DeFalco and his corporate team are housed on the 17th floor of One Beacon Street, a 37-story skyscraper in downtown Boston. Workers at a plant in Dalton, Mass., where the company was founded, produce the currency paper used for the company's clients, which include the U.S. Treasury.

Employees at a plant in Nashua produce the blue polymer material woven into $100 bills - a security feature designed to prevent counterfeiting. It's that 3-D blue line that divides the bill in half to the right of Ben Franklin's cranky mug.

"What that blue line actually is is a strip. We send it over to our paper machine, and we weave it into the paper," DeFalco said during an interview in Boston last week. "If you look at it from the back you can actually see that it runs the full course. It's just windowed on the front where sometimes it's under the paper, sometimes it's over the paper."

The Nashua plant, which Crane acquired in 2008 when it bought a local company, employs about 140 people and has openings for about 15 more workers who have skills in chemical engineering, optics, mathematics and statistical analysis, depending on the position.

The plant operates 24 hours a day, five days a week, but over the next year will be converting to a seven-day nonstop schedule, DeFalco said.

Paul Revere's paper
Crane Currency traces its roots to 1775, when Massachusetts papermaker Stephen Crane supplied the paper and mill used by engraver and freedom fighter Paul Revere to make the first U.S. securities so the young nation could pay its troops during the Revolutionary War. Crane's son, Zenas Crane, established his own paper mill in 1801 and continued what would become a family tradition producing paper for currency.

For most of its history, Crane was primarily a paper manufacturer, and has been the sole supplier of the cotton and linen blend used by the U.S. government to print currency since 1964. In 2014, Crane sold its technical materials division and the following year spun off its stationery business as a separate company, so it could focus on expanding the currency operation.

Those moves came after DeFalco joined the company in 2011 as the first outside CEO Crane has ever recruited. The privately held company appointed two other non-family chief executives over the years, but both of them were promoted from within.

This time, the board wanted a leader with experience leading a technology company rather than someone with a papermaking background. DeFalco, an MIT graduate who had just sold a publicly traded tech company in Toronto, relished the opportunity to return to Boston and run a private company again.

"Our board is a third private equity, a third Crane family and a third independents," said DeFalco, who grew up in New York. "What they really decided is (the company) is going to become a more global, more technology-oriented portfolio."

David adds:

To read the complete article, see:
Mike Cote's Business Editor's Notebook: Crane Currency is on leading edge of money-making security (www.unionleader.com/article/20170507/NEWS0206/170509486/-1/mobile)

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