Fortress Paper Ltd has announced its inaugural ePassport contract, for approximately two million five hundred thousand units representing estimated aggregate revenues in excess of $10 million over five years. Fortress Paper also announces that its Board of Directors has approved a plan to increase the production capacity of its banknotes from the current 2,500 tonnes per annum to approximately 10,000 tonnes per annum.
Chad Wasilenkoff, Chief Executive Officer of Fortress Paper reports, “This initial ePassport contract, orreference contract, is generally the most difficult to obtain. We feel this significant milestone now providesus with a platform to secure additional contracts in this rapidly growing and lucrative segment of theidentification industry.”
Electronic passports, also referred to as ePassports, are RFID, radio frequency identification, enabledpassports which have an embedded chip containing the holder's personal data and other biometricinformation, such as a digital photograph or fingerprint. As of October 2009, over 79 countries hadintroduced biometric passports and over 100 million ePassports had been issued globally. With over 70million new ePassports being issued every year, it is estimated that over the next ten years, most of the 750million passports currently in use will be replaced by electronic passports.
Fortress Paper’s Board of Directors has also approved a plan to increase the production capacity of its banknotes from the current 2,500 tonnes per annum to approximately 10,000 tonnes per annum. The rebuild of its PM1 Machine, currently utilized for lower margin specialty papers and low to medium security papers, into a higher margin high output banknote paper machine is expected to commence in the first quarter of 2010 with banknote production from this rebuilt machine scheduled to begin in the first quarter of 2011. This expansion initiative requires a capital expenditure at its Landqart Mill of approximately CDN $50 million. Fortress is currently finalizing a number of bank and debt based financing options.
