We are delighted to announce that the Philippines new 1000 Piso polymer banknote and the Australia's R series passport have won best-in-class awards at HSP Asia, the regional banknote and security ID conference currently being staged in Colombo, Sri Lanka.

For some of our longer serving staff it will be hard to believe, but 27 November 2023 was the 20th Anniversary of NPA manufacturing the Australian passport book for DFAT and the Australian Passport Office.

With the beehives are once again brimming with honey, NPA staff participated in the first Honey Harvest of the season which took place on Thursday 23 November.

On Friday 27 October, NPA was honoured to have Governor Michele Bullock visit the site. Her visit involved the formality of signing off on the new Australian $50 master sheet that displays her signature, and also involved a tour and a number of informal chats with staff along the way.

Led by NPA’s Specialist Technical Trainer Andrew Reynolds, NPA has an exciting crop of new talent coming through its ranks with nine staff participating in the Apprentice Training Program.

Assistant Minister for Foreign Affairs, Tim Watts, visited Note Printing Australia (NPA)’s Design and Passports departments this month, meeting staff and walking through the passports design and manufacturing process with our management team.  

Long Term Supply Agreements enable NPA to deliver a wide-range of valuable services to central banks that do not have their own high security print works.  This includes central bank staff training, which was most recently enjoyed by staff from Bank of Papua New Guinea.

NPA’s Lead Designer André Vancell uncovers some of the hidden design aspects of Australia’s new R series passport that provides further evidence as to why this passport has been so well received by the global security ID community. 

Last week, leaders of the R-series project took time to acknowledge the impressive contributions of departments across NPA in delivering the R-series passport, one of the most challenging and ambitious projects NPA has ever undertaken.

After the International Bank Note Society announced earlier this year that the Philippines new polymer 1000-Piso had been crowned the 2022 Banknote of the Year, the Melbourne branch of the IBNS this week formally presented the award to Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas Assistant Governor Mary Anne Lim in a ceremony held at Note Printing Australia.