Ghana: Margins Group Inaugurated US$3.5 Million Modern Facility For Security Printing
The Intelligent Card Production Systems (ICPS), a subsidiary of a Ghanaian-owned Margins Group inaugurated a US$3.5-million modern facility. It aims to meet the needs of all security cards and document printing and processing, for the local and the West African market and beyond.
The facility was made possible through a US$10 million Danida mixed credit facility to upgrade the company which can now undertake the full range printing of security documents, personalized identity (ID) cards as well as fully configured data cards.
ICPS is all set to become the only company in the country with capacity to produce specialised and high security cards such as Europay, MasterCard, Visa and other high security internationally certified documents.
The Chairman of the Margins Group, Mr Moses Kwesi Baiden mentioned that the mixed credit facility was a bold step to the operational advancement of the company.“The mixed credit is part of the final US$10 million upgrade of ICPS factory to an international certified standard which is in the final stages of completion over the next few months,” he said. Its central site of National Identification Authority (NIA) has been developed jointly with Dermalog of German, a company considered the leader in biometrics, together with IDFG of Denmark due to the support that it has received. The central site has the capacity to store 400 million fingerprints, 80 million faces and 80 million Irises, and is the most advanced biometric system in the country to date.
He added, “And the Identity Management Systems has been a private partner to NIA, in a Public Private Partnership according to the requirements specified by NIA over the last two years”.
The outgoing Danish Ambassador to Ghana, Ms Margit Thompson, officially handed over the US$3.5 million state-of-the-art card and security printing equipment to ICPS. Inspecting the facility, Ms Thompson, supported by the Ms Tetteh and Mr Rashid Pelpuo expressed her joy at the upgrade of the facility.
“This will enable the company to achieve its vision of producing world class products in Ghana and to contribute to the knowledge industry in the area of secured printing across the sub-region,” she said.
