De La Rue here to stay, em­ploy­ment num­bers to rise to 500

Malta Independent - - FRONT PAGE - Gabriel Schem­bri

Cur­rency print­ers De La Rue will be stay­ing in Malta and in­crease its in­vest­ment in its op­er­a­tions, rais­ing the num­ber of em­ploy­ees to 500.

De La Rue had an­nounced in De­cem­ber 2015 that it was to re­duce its work­force by 300 over a pe­riod of three years but at a press con­fer­ence called yes­ter­day af­ter­noon Prime Min­is­ter Joseph Muscat yes­ter­day an­nounced that the com­pany will re­main present in Malta.

In a state­ment is­sued later, De La Rue said that as part of its on­go­ing re­view of Global op­er­a­tions, the com­pany will con­tinue to print cur­rency at its fac­tory in Malta.

As a re­sult of the de­vel­op­ment, and con­trary to pre­vi­ous in­ten­tions, De La Rue will not be re­duc­ing its work­force and will not be of­fer­ing fur­ther vol­un­tary re­tire­ment schemes - in line with the re­vised need for an in­creased work­force aim­ing at a to­tal re­source of around 500 peo­ple in Malta.

Also speak­ing at yes­ter­day’s press con­fer­ence, Econ­omy Min­is­ter Chris Car­dona said that this de­ci­sion was reached af­ter dis­cus­sions be­tween the com­pany and Malta En­ter­prise. He said that this also shows the trust by the com­pany in Malta.

Ru­pert Mid­dle­ton, CEO of De La Rue thanked Malta En­ter­prise and the Gen­eral Work­ers Union for their sup­port.

Prime Min­is­ter Joseph Muscat said that this marks a very im­por­tant day for the man­u­fac­tur­ing in­dus­try in Malta and said that to­gether with Crane Cur­rency, the coun­try will be host­ing two of the ma­jor cur­rency print­ing com­pa­nies in the world.

The com­pany has been work­ing in Malta for over 40 years and last year an­nounced that it was cre­at­ing a Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence for Iden­tity and Se­cu­rity Print in Malta, as part of a global in­vest­ment of €33 mil­lion in equip­ment, fac­tory up­grades and skills. The works to create the Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence are well ad­vanced, to­day’s an­nounce­ment will see De La Rue con­tinue to print cur­rency in Malta within the new Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence, the com­pany said.

De La Rue is the world’s largest com­mer­cial printer of both

ban­knotes and pass­ports. To­day’s an­nounce­ment comes on the back of a solid busi­ness per­for­mance by De La Rue, who con­firmed that the move was de­signed to pro­vide the flex­i­bil­ity to meet cur­rent and fu­ture cus­tomer re­quire­ments, the com­pany said.

De La Rue CEO Martin Suther­land com­mented: “We have re­fined the im­ple­men­ta­tion plan for our global foot­print to give us a bet­ter blend of out­sourc­ing with a more flex­i­ble in house pro­duc­tion ca­pac­ity, and as a re­sult will be keep­ing the re­main­ing ban­knote print line open in Malta. Our highly skilled work­force in Malta has demon­strated that it is both flex­i­ble and pro­duc­tive – this is ex­actly what we need.”

Dr Muscat also an­nounced that MCAST will be open­ing a new course in print­ing to pro­vide nec­es­sary work­ers in the in­dus­try.

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