Opens plastic card plant in LagosALTECH West Africa, producer of prepaid scratch cards in Nigeria, has affirmed its commitment to the Central Bank of Nigeria's (CBN) new policy geared towards moving Nigeria into the cashless economy through the establishment of a smart card factory in Lagos.Speaking at the formal opening of the company's card plant recently, the Chairman, Altech West Africa, Michael Ajukwu Awa said: 'This state-of-the-art factory re-affirms the company's confidence in West Africa and Nigeria in particular as a growth market worthy of this large-scale investment.'The sustainable success of Altech West Africa is in keeping with the vision of its South African parent company, Altech Ltd, to achieve a global strategic position in the telecoms, multi-media and information technology environments. Our Nigerian investment is also in line with its mission which is the pursuit of globalisation through excellence in all its chosen operations whilst empowering its stakeholders'. The plant provides an end-to-end manufacturing facility including printing, embedding and personalisation services with an installed capacity of more than one million plastic cards per month.Altron's executive, Johan Gellatly, said the importance of the local production of smart cards is important to the successful operation of the cashless scheme. 'This will not only lower the cost of the card per unit, it will also radically reduce the go-to-market time for the production of cards. Presently, it takes average of minimum of three weeks to order smart cards from factories in Europe and Asia'. According to him, the card factory had undergone various processes of certifications from international and local payment card schemes and transactions processors in the past one-year.'Currently, the factory has enjoyed the confidence of all stakeholders in the Nigeria's e-payment industry. MasterCard, VISA, and Verve card powered by Interswitch has certified the plant. 'Also Genesis issued by eTranzact, Freedom card powered by 3Line and Mediterranean Smart Card Company (MSCC), the largest payment card processor in Africa, have certified the plant.' Gellatly said that Altech has the capacity to incorporate variable data during the printing process to include pictures and signatures (biometric data) on the card while offering high quality packaging solutions to products on request. Altech's smart card production facility is equipped with the latest technology.The plant personalises various types of smart card products such as contact or contactless. The factory also handles magnetic stripe encoding, hologram and security ink imprinting, picture imprinting, biometrics ID encoding as well as Drop on Demand technology (DoD). 'Altech's decision to diversify its South African operations into the rest of Africa was based on its belief that in an age of globalisation and an increasingly small world, Africa can no longer remain that wild, harsh place in the distance, as this beautiful continent is so often stereo-typed by western nations. One-tenth of the world's population is African. There have been significant economic, political and social developments to dispel the label associated with Africa. There is tremendous potential in Africa ' opportunities abound for growth powered by natural and human resources', Awa concluded.
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