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De La Rue and its local partner Pastoriza SRL, have been selected by the Direccion General de Pasaportes following a tender process, to develop a new design for the Dominican Republic’s refreshed machine readable passport.
The new passport entails a complete redesign of the current document, placing it firmly at the forefront of passport innovation in Latin America and worldwide. With new cross page designs, which include the latest design-integrated security features, oriented to emphasize the natural beauty of the country, this passport book will help to deliver world- leading counterfeit resistance.
This machine-readable passport, with enhanced security features, is intended to be the precursor for an ePassport solution that the Dominican Republic Government plans to have implemented by the end of next year.
Speaking about the award to De La Rue, Mr. Ramon M. Rodriguez, Director of the DGP (General Affairs for Passports) commented “I am sure we have selected the best partners to design our new passport, which will position us in a more comfortable position to perform the transition to the ePassport”.
Martin Sutherland, De La Rue Chief Executive Officer said: “The award of this design contract is testament to our on-going relationship with Dominican Republic and the expertise of our in-house design team. This is also a great partnership for our growth strategy in the area of identity, and we look forward to working on more projects with Dominican Republic.”
In terms of partnership, De La Rue announced recently that it has entered into a strategic partnership with Opalux, a producer of premium first level security features. The partnership will incorporate joint product development and related sales execution on a global basis.
Commenting on the new partnership, Ulrich Walter, the Managing Product Director of De La Rue’s Security Features and Identity Portfolio said: “As a security business, we spend every day staying ahead of the counterfeiter across currency, identity, tax stamps and brand protection. One of our core strategic priorities is to grow our security features portfolio by investing in research and development, as well as partnerships. Opalux has an exciting technology that we believe can play a significant role for our global customers, as part of an integrated portfolio and multiple solutions from De La Rue.”
Opalux develops and manufactures tunable photonic crystals; smart materials that change colour in response to external stimuli. Based on this platform technology, Opalux has created a range of highly recognisable and secure features with distinct colour effects for government documents. Speaking about the partnership, Andrew Binkley, the Chief Executive Officer of Opalux said: “We are excited to combine our leading edge technology and security features with De La Rue’s integrated portfolio and global reach. We look forward to working together to create a strong set of highly-differentiated solutions.”