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De La Rue
At the forefront of the currency business for 150 years, De La Rue is making a name for itself with cash handling products in the casino Industry. Ed Brindley, Managing Director, UK, for the Cash Processing Solutions division, spoke to Casino International about the company…
Founded in 1860, De La Rue has a rich heritage in the currency business and is widely known as the world's largest security printer. They provide bank note paper, design and print currency, and have, in more recent years, expanded into providing security holograms.
The cash handling side of the business, which Ed Brindley works for, provides equipment to all bulk cash handlers such as banks, cash in transit organisations and casinos. Ed explains how the company works…
Casino International: How do your cash handling products fit into an organisation?
Ed Brindley: When a retailer or casino clears its floor, and does a sweep of the tills and gaming tables, the cash is collected and taken to a dedicated processing area within the casino. Here the money is collected, authenticated and counted in bulk at very high speeds, much faster than an individual would be capable of. The hardware element of our solution counts the cash, authenticates it, and if required will face and orientate the money so that it is displayed in the same way. In addition the sorting machine completes a fitness sort, so we can determine what happens to that cash. As an example it could go back out to the public again via an ATM, or a bank branch counter, or back to the cage for use again in the casino. On occasion cash will have to go back to the Central Bank because it’s so damaged or classed as unfit, the bank notes cannot be recycled and therefore must be sent for secure destruction. All of those processing decisions are being made in real time on each bank note, at anything up to120,000 bank notes an hour. Holding all these sorter hardware systems together is our software, Enterprise Cash Management. This software not just manages the flow of the cash around the casino and soft count rooms, but also identifies where cash is at any stage of the process. It is important to understand who actually owns the cash because it’s obviously a valuable asset and if there is a discrepancy the cash centre need to be able to understand where the cash came from. In addition to providing the standard cash handling software, increasingly we are linking to other in-house systems such as digital CCTV systems to aid customer security. Casinos can also benefit from Business Intelligence, another of our software components, which we are the first in the industry to offer. This gives senior management real-time visibility of their entire cash operation, irrespective of location. They can see, with ease, which cash centres are running to their optimum and which ones are running less so. By looking for centres of excellence managers can bring all cash centres up to the same level.
CI: De La Rue invented the ATM – that must be a wonderful selling point when you speak to prospective clients…
EB: We did indeed invent it and installed the first machine in 1967. Today De La Rue produces about ten per cent of the ATM mechanisms. We don’t brand our own ATM machines but we do manufacture the dispensing mechanisms; the component that actually counts the notes and presents them to you.
The majority of the ATMs in the UK, sited at banks, contain money filled directly from a cash centre so our sorter machines may well have processed it. As mentioned earlier, cash centres traditionally sent the very best quality money back to the cash machine. In recent times quality of notes delivered to ATM’s has actually decreased. If you go to an ATM now, you may get some pretty scruffy looking notes, in comparison to previous years, that is because the machines have become better and better at handling poor quality notes – you used to just get pristine notes out of them. The convenience ATM’s, ie at a retailer or in a casino, can be self-filled, so the retailer will recycle the money from their own cash centre and fill the ATM machine directly with sorted cash, thereby avoiding unnecessary shipping of cash, which is costly as well as a potential security risk. Those self-fill ATMs have to be robust, and even more tolerant of the standard of notes.
CI: I know as a company you've been involved in casinos since the early 1990s… The casino environment is really the perfect place for the kind of technology you create, isn’t it?
EB: It is. It’s got particular differences from the banking environment, some of which are actually more exacting because of the strict regulations that govern casino and gaming. Everyone involved in this type of bulk cash handling needs to know exactly what’s going through the systems. The machines all have to conform to all the local gaming regulations and have to pass various requirements. These regulations and requirements vary considerably. Some regions ask for what’s called double counting, so we not only have to count the bank notes in the machine at the beginning, we have to count them out of the machine when they are packed for a particular destination, this can also be dependent upon denomination. What is important is that the two counts always tally, thereby ensuring all accounting rules are met. This is a stringent requirement within the casino environment that is not required within the banking sectors. Dealing with a variety of legislation always makes a business interesting and keeps us on our toes.
CI: So has this association with the gaming side helped strengthen the banking business for you?
EB: Yes. There is an element of synergy because the security that goes into a casino bulk cash handling solution is also useful to a bank. They might not necessarily have asked for the same requirements at the outset, but it is one of those things once you’ve got it, it almost becomes standard.
CI: What out of your product line would a modern casino use?
EB: It depends on the size of the operation. We have two main sorting hardware products; there's the CPS, which is our high-speed flagship machine, which runs up to 120,000 notes per hour. The length of this machine is 30 to 40 feet depending on the configuration. I would suggest that these are really for high capacity locations. There are no casinos in the UK, for instance, that require that capacity, but some in Las Vegas are large enough and certainly do. We also have a foothold in Macau, where we are seeing real growth.
The other machine is called Cobra, and that’s capable of up to 35,000 notes an hour, about a third of the speed. In terms of its capability though it’s exactly the same, it has the same detection and the same way of accounting. So when we talk to a customer we rarely discuss the type of hardware they’re going to purchase, it is really about how many notes an hour they need to process and in what timeframe. These factors are so much more important for a casino.
There is a huge difference between the processing methods of a bank and a casino. Bank cash centres may, and often do, operate 24 hours a day. This is less common in casinos. They need to maximise the customer playing times on the tables and the gaming machines. Therefore they have a dedicated timeframe to empty the gaming tables, and take the revenue up to the cash processing room. In addition casinos need to remove any excess cash, i.e. cash not being circulated back into the casino, from the premises and report on the days takings.
So there are two hardware products that are of prime use to casinos, these combined with our ECM software portfolio offer a complete bulk cash handling solution that gives casinos the level of security, accuracy and control they need to function effectively.
CI: What do you bring to a gaming establishment?
EB: Ultimately we reduce the cost of their cash processing. That is what all of our customers, casino and non-casino are after at the end of the day. We are a supply chain industry, so it’s about process efficiency and productivity. It’s about doing things with as few manual processes as possible, automation is the obvious key.
CI: By combining your tools with some of the other stuff that’s coming up at the moment, somebody could actually have quite powerful real time accounting on the floor.
EB: Absolutely, and the real-time element is very important as is the open architecture. We are not the only players in the cash handling industry and as such there is a mix of equipment installed in casinos. We do understand when it comes to software, the importance of offering systems that are open, allowing customers to utilise their legacy or third party equipment if required. In Macau for instance, we interface directly with IGT's system. For every ticket that goes through our machines, the barcode is read and all the information acknowledged and uploaded to the IGT database which reconciles it. The IGT system controls the issue and then redemption of the tickets on the floor, so this acts as a double check for the casino. Our systems acknowledge that the ticket has entered the soft count room and the data has been uploaded. The ticket can then be removed from the process.
CI: Presumably with recent growth in the industry, business has been good…
EB: We are finding the growth in casinos staggering at the moment. There has been an explosion of super casinos being built across the globe. The physical growth of the casino market has also sparked a necessity to adopt best practice business methodologies, which wasn’t quite so apparent a few years ago. Manual cash counting was common place, so the easiest business development is to automate the process. I also think that the development of tickets within the casino has pushed the need for automation. Irrespective of the reason there is a huge surge of interest in cash handling technology used by casinos today.
CI: So what makes you special? There's some fierce competition out there.
EB: Security, integrity and trust is our mission statement. We understand currency and the supply chain inside out. As an organisation we design the bank note, we print it, we develop its security features and we develop the hardware and software systems specifically to manage the process of moving and allocating cash securely for all parties concerned. Keeping ahead of the counterfeits is always a difficult task, but that is the same concern for all suppliers in the industry. However we believe that the combination of our technical expertise, our business acumen, our innovative product design and our longevity in the cash processing industry gives our customers the peace of mind they are looking for when partnering with a cash expert.
CI: What are De La Rue’s main global markets?
EB: We have offices in 36 different countries and we have distribution or representation in most of the others, so we really are a global company. However, our current focus is the US, China, India, Russia and Brazil.
CI: What’s on the horizon for De La Rue?
EB: We’re going after more growth, that is the simple answer. We constantly monitor the entire bulk cash handing industry and are always looking for emerging markets, new geographic footholds or industry segments. Casinos are a good example of where we can apply knowledge that we have in other sectors that are now very relevant in another market.
