Printers
Printed on:
• Orchid series all denominations
• Bird series all denominations
• Ship series all denominations
Singapore has used eight different companies to print its banknotes over the years. These include both paper and polymer note printers. For paper notes, the printers were: Thomas De La Rue & Co Ltd (TDLR), Bradbury Wilkinson & Co Ltd (BWC), Harrisons and Sons (HAS), BA Banknote (BA), and Oesterreichische Banknoten- und Sicherheitsdruck GmbH (OeBS) of Austria. For polymer notes, the printers were Note Printing Australia (NPA), Orell Füssli, Zurich (OFZ) and Oberthur Fiduciaire (Oberthur). Different printers are used because not all companies have the equipment or expertise to handle both paper and polymer materials.
In the Orchid, Bird, and most of the Ship series, each banknote was printed by only one company. But starting with the Ship $2 and $5 notes, BCCS began experimenting with using more than one printer for the same note. This helps because if one printer has delays, another can continue the printing so there’s no shortage. It also lets the authorities compare the quality of printing between different companies. For the Portrait series, MAS seems to have continued this approach.
Another practice has also changed. In the Orchid, Bird, and Ship series, the name of the printer appears in small print on the back of each note. If a single note was printed by more than one company—like the Ship $2 and $5—the design remained the same, and only the printer name was different. But from the Portrait series onwards, with the authorities no longer disclosing the identity of the printer, this information has also stopped appearing on our banknotes.
A final observation about printers relates to replacement notes. In the Orchid and Bird series, only TDLR used replacement notes (with prefixes like “Z”), but BWC did not. This suggests that BWC may have used a different method of quality control—likely checking full bundles before serial numbers were applied. If a sheet was damaged, it would simply be removed and replaced without affecting the numbering sequence. TDLR, however, likely applied serial numbers earlier in the printing process, which meant that if a sheet was damaged, it had to be replaced with a pre-numbered replacement note.
The list below shows which notes were printed by each company. Where marked “probably,” the printer has not been officially disclosed, but is inferred based on the note’s material, design, and security features.
TDLR:
- Orchid: $10, $25, $50, $500, $1000, $10000
- Bird: $10, $50, $500, $1000, $10000
- Ship: $1, $2, $5, $10, $50, $100, $500, $1000, $10000
- Portrait (paper): $1000, $10000; probably also $2, $5, $10, $50, $100
- Commemorative: 1996 MAS25, 1999 M2
BWC (acquired by TDLR in 1986):
- Orchid: $1, $5, $100
- Bird: $1, $5, $20, $100
HAS (acquired by TDLR in 1997):
- Ship: $2, $5
BA:
- Ship: $2
OeBS:
- Portrait: probably $2, $5, $10, $50, $100
NPA:
- Portrait (polymer): $10
- Commemorative: 1990 SG25 $25, 1999 M2 $2, 2007 CIA40 $20, probably 2015 SG50 $50 and $10
OFZ:
- Portrait (polymer): probably $2, $5, $10
Oberthur:
- Commemorative: 2019 B200 $20