World’s Biggest Cash-Money-Printer “Confident We’ll Be Selling More Machines Soon”

Amid the global war on cash, the rise of cryptocurrencies, and tightening central banks, the world’s biggest money-printer is turning its attention elsewhere to stay afloat.

After 201 years, German firm, Koenig & Bauer AG – the market leader for machines that print the world’s banknotes – is pushing into printing on Coke cans and beverage cartons.

“Here we are attacking the former monopolist”, Chief Financial Officer Mathias Daehn said in an interview with Bloomberg at the company headquarters in Wuerzburg, referring to Stolle Machinery, a unit of Japan’s Toyo Seikan Group Holdings Ltd while picking a lidless Coke can from his windowsill.

Koenig & Bauer dominates the market for printing on three-piece food cans, but the more sophisticated printing of two-piece containers for beer and Coca-Cola is largely in the hands of Stolle, Daehn says.

But reports of the demise of the banknote business have been greatly exaggerated according to Bloomberg, as it appears the establishment is losing the war on cash…

As Bloomberg reports, Koenig & Bauer, in which Chief Executive Claus Bolza-Schuenemann, great-great-grandson of the company founder, and his family still own about one-fifth of the shares, is tight-lipped about the buyers of their banknote printing machines. However, Daehn confirmed that all U.S. dollar and euro banknotes are printed on the company’s machines.

“In high-margin security printing, where we hold over 90 percent of the world market, we continue to see a good development with a stable new machines business,” Daehn said.

“Especially emerging markets need increasing amounts of cash, as cash in circulation closely correlates with gross domestic product”, Daehn said, countering reports that banknotes are becoming obsolete because of the advance of cashless payments.

While there have been some ‘scares’ it appears the money-printing business’ trend is once again alive and well…