The national banks of Kazakhstan and Georgia have been awarded the coveted Banknote of the Year, sharing the honours for the 20,000 tenge banknote and new Lari currency series.
Reconnaissance, the organisers of High Security Printing Europe, announced the joint winners of the Regional Banknote of the Year 2016 at a special ceremony during the conference in Bucharest, Romania on 15 March 2016.
The award recognises outstanding achievement in the design, technical sophistication and security of a banknote or banknote series, the key judging criteria being that successful banknotes should combine visual artistry and high levels of technical and security sophistication, with considerable emphasis placed on reflecting the cultural heritage of the issuing country in the note, and the relevance of the overall design and symbolism to the issuing country.
The first award was presented to the National Bank of Kazakhstan for the new high denomination 20,000 tenge banknote.
Like other notes in the Kazakh series, the imaginatively-designed note is vertically-orientated and was introduced in December 2015. It is the world’s first circulating banknote to be produced on Durasafe® – the composite paper-polymer-paper substrate from Swiss papermaker Landqart.
The three-layer substrate has enabled a number of unique features to be created. Each layer is a different colour on either side, and each of the two paper layers have different security fibres.
The note also features four windows, all formed in either one or both of the outer paper layers. As well as offset, intaglio, and silkscreen OVI®, a SPARK® Dynamic motif, combining silkscreen and intaglio blind embossing, was applied.
The design features the Kazakh Eli monument to Kazakhstan’s independence, the winged horse and the Mangilik El triumphal arch as well as a contour map of Kazakhstan, and a panorama of the capital, Almaty, on the reverse.
The award was presented to Dastan Mashrapov of the National Bank of Kazakhstan and Andrey Shevchenko from the Banknote Factory of the National Bank.
The second award was made to the National Bank of Georgia, for the introduction of a new series of lari notes. This is the first redesign in the currency’s 20 year history, which begins with a new 20 and 50 lari with 5, 10 and 100 lari notes to follow.
The designs are based on the existing series, featuring Georgia’s cultural and historical heritage but with a distinctly different and more modern appearance.
The 50 and 100 lari feature SPARK® for the first time, while the 20 lari features OVI for the first time (as will the new 5 and 10 lari notes). The new notes also include a holographic stripe in which the image matches the portrait on the note, iridescent stripe and demetallised colour shift window thread. The mould-made watermark also matches the portrait, and is supplemented by an electrotype with the denomination and the currency symbol for the lari.
Additional security features include visible and UV fluorescent fibres, latent image, see-through feature and microtext. In addition to the ascending order in the size of the notes, the visually-impaired have also been catered for by the use of raised intaglio bars on either side of the note, the number of which denote the denomination.
The award was received by Mariam Zavradashvili of the National Bank of Georgia.
Source: Reconnaissance
