VISITING ROYAL JOHANNES ENSCHEDE

One of the highlights of my recent trip to the MIF Paper Money Fair in Maastricht was attending a presentation by Marcel Klok, Sales Director Banknotes, of the storied Dutch security printer Royal Johannes Enschedé. His presentation briefly touched on the history of the firm established in 1703, and gave a nice overview of the process of banknote printing from conception, design, approval, and mass production. While Enschedé no longer prints legal tender banknotes for nations, they are still a major player in printing other security documents such as passports and stamps, as well as commercial banknotes for private entities that capitalize on their expertise in anti-counterfeiting features and distinctive numismatic designs.

At the end of his presentation, Klok extended an open invitation to the audience to visit Enschedé in Haarlem. Knowing that banknote printers are usually very discrete and secretive, I eagerly accepted this rare offer and was pleasantly surprised when he confirmed my visit for two days after MIF ended. An easy 15-minute train ride from Amsterdam brought me to the outskirts of Haarlem where the Enschedé plant sits adjacent to an IKEA furniture store. The nondescript low-slung industrial building is surrounded by a steel perimeter fence topped with spikes and razor wire, reinforced with granite bollards, and plenty of security cameras; all clues that there's something special going on inside.

Much of the equipment at Enschedé was familiar to me from my high school print shop training, though on a much different scale, to be sure. At one point Klok asked if I wanted to enter the printer and I thought it must have been a translation error or I misheard somehow. But in fact the intaglio printer is so large that there are areas where one can literally stand upright inside, watching the paper feed onto drums that churn incessantly. At a light table, Klok pulled out some sheets with pages of a passport of an African country so that we could examine the fine raised intaglio printing and other security features. Elsewhere in the factory, I saw self-adhesive German postage stamps on spools as large as tractor trailer tires. After high-speed ink-jet printers applied unique bar codes to each stamp that allows for digital tracking and cancelation, the enormous spools were sliced into small coils of stamps, each boxed for retail sale.

 

Enschedé wasn't printing any banknotes when I visited, but our next stop on the tour was downtown Haarlem, to the site of the original Enschedé printing facility that had produced notes from 1810 until 1990. Driving down the ramp to the underground parking garage, Klok pointed out that our car was entering the old banknote vaults, though there was no remainders to be found, alas. The old Enschedé printing complex is an ornate brick building with lots of visually interesting architectural details, including a clock tower and memorial plaque.

 
Enschedé museum display

To read the complete article, see:
Enschedé: A Rare Peek Inside The Secretive World Of Bank Note Printing (https://www.greysheet.com/news/story/ensched%C3%A9-a-rare-peek-inside-the-secretive-world-of-bank-note-printing)

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