Have you evern wondered how our new coinage is distributed after it is manufactured at the Royal Australian Mint in Canberra? How does it end up in your purse or wallet?
Newly struck brilliant uncirculated coins leave the presses and accumulate into 44 gallon drums. These drums are manoevered through the mint facility by AGV's (automated guided vehicles) which make light work of coin handling. This is the end of the Mint's involvement with the new circulating coins, they are shipped off in these 44 gallon drums to security companies such as Armaguard.
At the security companies these new coins are loaded into a huge coin hopper. Depending on what denomination is being processed up to 4 of these 44 gallon drums may fit into these huge hoppers. This hopper then trickle feeds the new coins into 6 coin batchers that counts out the specified amounts and then drop them into a small satchel bagger. The small bags drop out the bottom onto an elevator which runs onto a conveyor into a big bagger. The big bagger seals the larger bag of multiple small bags and sends it to the check weigher. These bagged coins will then be opened up and manually counted to check the quantities are accurate. Any weight difference can then be allowed for, or the check weigher adjusted to the accurate weight for this batch of coins. These big bags are then dumped into big bins. This process can produce 300 bigger bags of 25 smaller bags ($100 x 20c bags) in an hour. The majority of new coins are processed this way into sachets. Companies such as Woolworths and Big W require their change to be delivered in sachets and not into rolls anymore. Coles have systems in place favouring rolled coin. So what happens next? Armaguard, Brinks or other security carriers delivers the new coin to their clients such as supermarkets and banks in manageable weights.
$2 = $50
$1 = $20
50c = $10
20c = $4
10c = $4
5c = $2
And what happens to those empty 44 gallon drums now? Well just in case you're interested some are sold to a bio-fuel company to collect waste cooking oil at the back of restaurants and takeaways!
Posted by harrisk at August 4, 2010 9:06 PM
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