Plastic fantastic
 

Newcastle Herald (Australia)

16.12.00

Reserve Bank of Australia subsidiary Note Printing Australia (NPA) is selling its locally designed plastic banknotes and the associated technology to flood-prone Bangladesh. The issue of the first batch of the notes on Thursday was greeted with long queues for the water resistant notes in the capital of the world's eighth largest country where high temperatures and humidity cause rapid deterioration of the traditional paper currency, NPA said. The Asian nation, with a population of 140million, is the most recent in a string of countries that have bought notes made by NPA using the Australian-developed polymer technology. NPA chief executive John Leckenby would not disclose the value of the contract with Bangladesh Bank but said exports of polymer notes brought more than $10million a year to Australia.