The official site of Italy's central bank

Machinery and equipment

Along Via Tuscolana in Rome, at number 417, you will note a modern industrial plant, that of the Banknote Printing Department. This is where the Bank of Italy produces banknotes, using state-of-the-art technology and equipment.

The Bank decided from the very start - in 1894 - to have an industrial plant of its own for banknote production. This choice reflects the public nature of this task and guarantees satisfaction of the essential requirements of security, traceability and quality.

Since 1 January 2002 the Bank of Italy has been issuing euro banknotes under the rules and principles governing the Eurosystem issuance function. The European Central Bank issues 8 per cent of the notes, and the various national central banks, including the Bank of Italy, are responsible for the remaining 92 per cent, in proportion to their stakes in the ECB's capital. The printing of the notes is assigned according to a method of "decentralized pooling" in which each Eurosystem printing works has a production run restricted to certain denominations. The NCBs also take care of the sorting, collection, withdrawal and destruction of worn and damaged notes.

Special attention is paid to counterfeiting, to the quality of the banknotes and the production processes, and to environmental protection.

In terms of security, euro banknotes comprise - in addition to the security features familiar to the general public, such as watermark, security threads and copperplate printing - features allowing the notes to be used in vending machines and to be handled by automatic sorting and counting machinery. They also have two-tone inks that change colour with the angle of the light, holograms and optically variable marks.

As to quality control, the Banknote Printing Department obtained ISO 9002:1994 certification from Det Norske Veritas certification agency in December 2001 and ISO 9001:2000 certification in June 2003. The Eurosystem central banks have adopted a common quality system in order to ensure that different production plants, which also use different technologies, will produce banknotes that are identical in appearance and in their security features.

As to environmental protection, the Bank of Italy pays special attention to waste management, both through the effort to devise more efficient disposal methods and by careful monitoring of the quality of industrial waste by outside laboratories. Further, differential refuse collection has been instituted throughout the entire plant, with an information campaign directed to the entire staff.