After Federation in 1901, by 1912 Australia still did not have its own currency. To address this issue, T.S. Harrison II was recruited to Australia by the country’s third Prime Minister, Andrew Fisher. Harrison set up his operations in Kings Warehouse, located in Melbourne’s Docklands area. At the time, Harrison described the building as rat-infested and a firetrap, yet despite the working conditions, T.S. Harrison Banknote Printer delivered the first Australian banknote – the 10 shilling – on 1 May 1913.

After a senate enquiry in the early 1920s in which the Commonwealth Bank (owned at that time by the Australian Government) attempted to take control of note printing and take the operation to Sydney, Harrison successfully persuaded the federal government to fund a new building on Victoria Parade in Fitzroy. From 1926 to 1980, printing operations were established in what is now the Australian Catholic University.

During that time, the Note Printing Branch as it became known printed some very innovative notes. This included the One Pound in 1954, the first Australian banknote to portray Queen Elizabeth's portrait, which offered visual depth enabled through the use of photography, a significant forward in banknote security at the time.

The introduction of decimal currency in 1966 also required a major shift in thinking to move people from the old Imperial system to the new metric system. As a cash intensive society, Note Printing Branch needed to respond to the growing demand for cash. In those days the operation required manual inspection of the 100 million banknotes it was producing each year. NPA also printed postage stamps, cheques, government bonds and even aerograms. Staff numbers peaked during this time with a workforce of around 700.

When operations began in 1981, a program was put in place to transition staff to move 30 km north to the country town of Craigieburn. This included the offer of low interest loans to buy housing, and for the first 12 months the provision of a free bus service with multiple runs collecting staff from as far west as Geelong and as far east as Frankston. Craigieburn was so isolated that the site not only had a general store, but a bank branch and a post office.

From 1966 to 1988, Note Printing Branch (now a department of the Reserve Bank of Australia which was established in 1960) worked with the CSIRO in secret trials to create a new counterfeit resistant banknotes substrate, which involved printing test three dollar and the seven dollar notes. Through the work of some very determined banknote printers, NPA successfully produced Australia's first circulating polymer banknotes starting with the Commemorative $10 in 1988, the first banknote ever produced to incorporate a foil (diffractive optical effect). It's worth, noting that other international organisations had attempted to manufacture a robust polymer banknote but failed.

Australia’s first polymer banknotes were printed in ‘The Annex’ which is today the Services Building. With the global interest in polymer banknotes growing, the Reserve Bank of Australia decided to establish Note Printing Australia (NPA) as a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Bank and split off the polymer substrate manufacturing operation which was called Securency as a separate entity in which the Bank was a 50% shareholder.

Starting in the 1990s and due to its market leading expertise in polymer banknote printing, NPA moved into the export market and producing both paper and polymer banknotes for countries like PNG, Malaysia Thailand, Nepal, Mexico, Vietnam and Singapore.

In 2004, NPA won the contract to manufacture the whole Australian passport – previously NPA had printed the visa pages only – and within a few months was given an 18-month deadline by the Australian Government to design and develop Australia’s first ePassport in which an embedded chip holds biometric data. Of the countries involved in this innovative initiative, only NPA successfully met the delivery deadline.

From 2008-13, NPA began an overhaul of its Print Hall upgrading its machines in anticipation of a future second Australia polymer series. This represented a A$130 million capital investment that enabled NPA to move into the future decades with a modern printing line.

Before the National Banknote site was constructed from 2014-16, NPA served the function of fitness checking and destroying unfit banknotes, which was called the NNPDC department. This department was responsible for the shredding and recycling of polymer banknote waste, a practice NPA has had in place for more than 20 years.

When Connor McLeod, a blind and deaf 13 year old boy wrote to then-Governor Glenn Stevens, asking that a feature be included in the new second Australian polymer banknote series that would allow him to identify different denominations, this led to a flurry of research activity that led to the addition of the tactile emboss feature which was developed in less than 18 months.

The delivery of the second Australian polymer banknote series starting with the $5 in 2016 was a major achievement for NPA. Successive years saw a new denomination added, which culminated in the $100 being printed in 2020.

In 2019, Security Printer Jade McDonald and Operators Yvonne Claassan and Harneet Kaur crewed the Super Numerota, and in doing so became the first all-female crew in cover a shift at NPA. In that year, NPA and the Australian Passport Office also celebrated the delivery of its 25th millionth ePassport.

During the pandemic, NPA had to keep progressing its business which included meeting a new deadline for the R series passport. As an entirely new passport, a new line was required but due to travel restrictions the technical team from Germany was unable to enter Australia. NPA therefore assembled its own team to install the first two (of four) new machines needed for R series. The team incorporated the new machines into the final year of printing for the P series passport.

NPA’s old museum was also renovated during the COVID years, and in 2021 The Protectorate was opened. This vibrant visitor experience on Level 2M overlooks the operational areas of banknote and passport printing and is primarily aimed at Year 9-12 students who are invited to consider their career options through the lens of NPA, which offers 30 different career pathways through its business.

2021 was also a pivotal year for NPA when it successfully entered into a strategic collaboration with Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas. Then-Governor Benjamin E. Diokno took the decision for NPA to assist in the Philippines’ transition to polymer banknotes by not only providing initial polymer banknote volumes but delivering an wide range of expertise and services to mitigate their risks in transition period. NPA’s goal in this collaboration is to see BSP become a capable and independent printer of polymer banknotes.

In 2024, NPA also entered into a new agreement with DFAT that retains the manufacturing of Australian passports which includes work on the next passport – the T series. Our passports team hit new heights in the production of the R-Series when it showed that, if required, it was capable of delivering 395,000 books in a month, a volume that is more then double its normal monthly output.

As a critical national asset, NPA has been an incredible journey across more than 110 years. It remains a vital contributor to NPA’s economic and financial security, and has a positive, healthy and resilient culture that is capable of not only successfully dealing with a changing environment but has the confidence and capability to determine its own future.