Royal Mint to stop making foreign coins after 700 years
- Royal Mint has been making coins for overseas countries since 1325
- From December 2024, the Mint will stop making foreign coins completely
The Royal Mint will stop making coins for other countries this year, with 200 employees switching from making coins to recycling gold, This is Money reveals.
The Mint makes coins for Great Britain and 28 other countries at its site in Llantrisant, Wales.
The exact list of countries to which the Mint currently supplies coins is classified, but includes Australia, Jamaica, Iceland, Thailand, New Zealand and South Africa.
The Mint is Britain’s oldest company and started making overseas coins in 1325, 699 years ago.
Focus on Britain: The Royal Mint will only produce money for Britain from 2025. Pictured is the visitor center which is part of the main site in Llantrisant, Wales
But from December 2024, the Royal Mint will stop making these overseas coins and instead focus solely on making coins for Britain.
The declining demand for coins abroad is the basis for the decision, which affects 200 employees.
According to the latest annual results, the Mint issued just 56 coins in 2022/23, compared to 339 in 2021/22 and 437 in 2020/21.
The Royal Mint’s currency department is losing money, making a loss of £13.1 million in 2022/2023, compared to £4.5 million the year before.
Instead, the Mint will focus on recovering gold used in circuit boards, such as those in cell phones and laptops.
The Mint is building a factory in Llantrisant that can recover 99 percent of the gold used in electronic items.
The 200 affected employees will be offered jobs at the gold recycling plant, which in theory should not mean any layoffs. They are also transferred to jobs making jewelry and gold bullion.
But a Royal Mint worker told This is Money: ‘This is a huge loss for the valleys, coinciding with job losses in the steelworks.’
A spokesperson for The Royal Mint said: ‘The decline in the use of cash globally has been a catalyst for change at the Royal Mint, driving innovation and a portfolio of new businesses.
“The success of these growing businesses means we will stop taking new orders for foreign exchange and transfer employees to alternative roles.
“This marks a new chapter for the Royal Mint, safeguarding our jobs and profitability in the long term.
‘We remain fully committed to the making of British coins, which have been at the heart of the Royal Mint for 1,100 years.
“Our coin-making expertise has enabled our growth in areas such as precious metals investments and luxury jewelry.
‘We have made a significant investment of more than £17 million in new businesses, including a world-first factory to recover precious metals from electronic waste, which will open this year.’
The recovered gold is used for the Royal Mint’s jewelery line, 886 – a reference to the year the Mint was founded.
Royal Mint CEO Anne Jessopp founded 866 in 2022 as a way to diversify the legacy institution.
The gold price surged to a record high of $2,365 per ounce in early April 2024.
For centuries the Royal Mint made coins in the Tower of London, but about sixty years ago the Treasury group moved its factory to Llantrisant, about 10 miles north of Cardiff.