Innovations Showcased at High Security Printing Asia

At the recent High Security Printing™ (HSP) Asia conference, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, over 300 delegates gathered to examine how technologies for banknotes, passports, and other secure documents are evolving to address today’s requirements for sophisticated, yet environment-friendly solutions.

One innovation that caught the eye of Tax Stamp & Authentication News™ (TSAN) relates to security fibres, a widely used feature for tax stamps, passports and banknotes, which integrates into the paper substrate of these documents and is very difficult to simulate. In fact, counterfeiters usually don’t even attempt to copy security fibres, preferring to focus on the printed or applied security elements sitting on the paper’s surface.

During the conference, Gary Spinks of Security Fibres Ltd, a leading producer of paper-based fibres, described how his company has developed a patented process for removing security fibres from leftover paper pulp, thereby reducing waste and cost in the papermaking process.

Although security fibres constitute a very small percentage of the bulk material used in papermaking – something like 0.1%-0.2% – if red fibres, for example, cannot be removed from leftover pulp so the pulp can be reused for a job requiring yellow fibres, the papermaker is obliged to store the ‘red’ pulp for future jobs, or even dispose of it.