Mühlbauer systems personalize ePassports in Portugal - Issue of new passports already started

Roding, September 12th, 2006 - The Mühlbauer technology group, quoted on the Prime Standard and worldwide active and independent advisor and manufacturer of innovative security solutions for the TECURITY market, successfully installed personalization equipment for the new electronic passport in Portugal. Mühlbauer collaborated with the Portuguese national printing agency INCM (Imprensa Nacional Casa da Moeda), which has been a partner for many years.

Since the end of August, as an additional EU country, Portugal has been able to issue biometric passports. The Portuguese president Aníbal Cavaco Silva, who received the new passport at the public inauguration, described that fact as an important contribution to security. The Portuguese passport is machine readable, stores biometric data of the holder and meets the latest European security requirements. Because the Portuguese passport is ICAO conformal, a visa-free entry is possible into the USA according to the Visa Waiver Program. It’s assumed that about 400,000 new passports are issued each year.

With its successful product line IDENTIFIER, combined with the experience from multiple government projects, Mühlbauer also met the requirements of this project. Laser personalization as well as chip encoding of the Portuguese passport is done centrally by the IDENTIFIER 5400. During this project an unique process of laser personalization was developed in close collaboration with INCM. Based on this and by integrating a special marking module in accordance with customer requirements, Mühlbauer showed once again the flexibility of the team and most notably the modularity of the IDENTIFIER Line.

Josef Mühlbauer, CEO of Mühlbauer AG: “We are very proud to have successfully realized another governmental ePassport project. A project of this scale and dimension is an absolute proof of trust. All our customers can rely on us that we meet even the highest requirements.”

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Muehlbauer is a global and independent consultant and manufacturer of technologically innovative security solutions in a market segment the company refers to as the TECURITY® market. With more than 1,500 employees at 26 locations on five continents, Muehlbauer is the leading provider of production systems for the Smart Card industry.
Muehlbauer system solutions are suitable for the manufacture of any card type. They are used in the production of ID cards, ePassports, eVisa, contact and contactless cards, dual interface cards and multimedia cards. The products are, above that, suitable for the manufacture of Smart Labels for the security, supply chain, textile and retail industries.

Information on Muehlbauer is available on the Internet at www.muehlbauer.de

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Werner Sobek

Mühlbauer AG

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