Haarlem, December 12, 2014
As part of an official visit to the Netherlands, France's Minister of the Interior, Bernard Cazeneuve visited today the identity document production facility of Morpho (Safran) in Haarlem, accompanied by Philippe Petitcolin, Chairman and CEO of Morpho.
Formerly the Dutch State Printer, the Haarlem plant was privatized and acquired by Safran in 2008. With a staff of 350 employees, the facility is one of Morpho's key industrial centers for the production and personalization of identity documents, including secure ID documents such as passports, national ID cards and driver's licenses. The Haarlem facility is specialized in high security polycarbonate data page technology, and also houses an R&D center specialized in documentary fraud and document security, including e-security.
As world leader in identification solutions, Morpho supplies identity documents for 18 countries. Since 2000, the Haarlem plant alone has produced more than 70 million of those documents for customers including, among others, the Netherlands, Albania, Chili, Finland, Mauritania, Panama, Slovakia and INTERPOL. Morpho also provides secure elements for countries with their own national printing capacity, including, among others, France, Egypt and Portugal.
Philippe Petitcolin, Chairman and CEO of Morpho, said, "The Haarlem plant is an excellent illustration of Safran's commitment to maintaining a strong industrial, technological and commercial footprint within Europe. We directly contribute to shaping industry research and implementing policy in the field of government identity and security solutions. An example of this is Morpho's ISO 14298 accreditation of the Haarlem facility for the production of highly secure ID documents. This certification, the first in the industry, guarantees our customers the safest printing procedures and production capacity available on the market today."