Crane Currency brings Swedish krona banknote printing to Malta

The American security printer Crane Currency will be moving its Swedish banknote printing operations to Malta by the end of the year.

Crane Currency, which until recently printed Swedish banknotes in Tumba, Sweden, had acquired the print offices from the Sveriges Riksbank in 2002 for €15 million.

Tumba Bruk, the company owned by Sveriges Riksbank, have been responsible for printing krona banknotes since 1750.

Crane said that it planned to close down the printing company in Tumba, centralising all bank statements to Malta. “A competitive market in combination with existing infrastructure at the Tumba plant has forced us to present this difficult but necessary plan for Crane Currency,” president Annemarie Watson said.

Thomas Lundberg, Riksbank press officer, expressed his disappointment at the transfer, claiming that a part of the region’s heritage had been lost. “It’s a bit of a banknote story that goes into the grave here,” Lundberg said.

Crane managing director Anders Blomberg said negotiations have already been initiated with 170 employees already notified.

The transfer of banknote production from Sweden to Malta was a shock to the Tumba community, after the town was told back in 2001 that Crane’s acquisition of the facility would not result in their closure.

Swedish Krona has been in circulation for hundreds of years, but Sweden is predicted to be a ‘cash-free’ country within the next half a decade. Cash transactions in Sweden amount to only 2% of the value of all payments made in Sweden, with the figure expected to drop below 0.5 percent by the next five years.

A study by Visa showed that Swedes use their debit cards three times the European average, with some 207 payments per card in 2015, compared to France where the figure was 141.