Production of passports in the digital age!

Most of information needed for international passports is stored in digital format and resides on various online databases. What is physically printed must accommodate the automatic ID scanning tools used by border security personnel and therefore requires marking techniques with high resolving power for the finest details. Production of today’s passports has therefore become a sophisticated process that is taken on by specialized system integrators. One of the leading players in this field is Zetes, a pan-European company offering solutions and services for automatic identification of goods and people.

In the first quarter of 2014, Zetes will install two Bookmaster One systems at its Brussels personalization plant to print the variable data of the Belgian passports by means of a full colour industrial inkjet engine that prints the personal data on all pages of the document. Both systems will use Agfa Graphics’ Altamira Pack SUV ink set.

The Altamira Pack SUV ink set has been formulated with wetting properties that are specifically tuned for printing on paper-based substrates and cartons to deliver the highest image quality and crisp rendering of text in the smallest point sizes.