Australian Company to Modernize Mint with Robots

Family owned, Australian business, Australis Engineering P/L has won the tender to update the Royal Australian Mint’s materials handling and warehousing system. The new system along with the refurbishment of the Mint’s facilities in Canberra and other modernisation projects is central to the Mint’s objective of becoming one of the best manufacturing facilities in the world.

Australis Engineering’s proposed solution to the Mint’s requirements incorporates high levels of process automation, modernised infrastructure and equipment, and re-engineered processes to:

• increase the physical security of coinage blanks and coins;
• reduce OH&S risks through the physical separation of people and equipment;
• reduce or eliminate manual handling within the Mint;
• automate the real time accounting and auditing of blanks and coins as they progress through the receipt, production, storage and delivery processes; and
• minimise time wasted with work in progress and the transportation of materials around the Mint’s premises.

The project provides for the complete design, supply, installation and commissioning of equipment and systems. This project will address all aspects of materials handling, warehousing and inventory control from receipt of blank coin, through manufacturing and production, quality control and warehousing, to the despatch of finished circulating coins.

The project will align with the current building refurbishment project, with delivery programmed for March 2009. The total value of the materials handling and warehousing system contract is $7.4 million

“Australis’ proposal is state of the art. Along with the refurbishment project the new automated system using robots, automated guided vehicles and a unique multi-axis bucket elevator blank delivery system will ensure the Mint is a truly modern manufacturing facility that will not only meet all the Mint’s stated requirements but will attract thousands of additional visitors to the upgraded public gallery when the refurbished Mint reopens to the public in early 2009” said Ms Janine Murphy, CEO of the Royal Australian Mint.

“Australis Engineering is proud to have won the contract and very keen to be associated with the Royal Australian Mint as it undergoes a significant period of upgrading and modernising all aspects of its operations” said Mr Phillip Gustafson, Managing Director of Australis Engineering.

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About the Royal Australian Mint

His Royal Highness, The Duke of Edinburgh, officially opened the Royal Australian Mint, Canberra, on Monday 22nd February 1965. The Mint was commissioned to produce Australia’s decimal coinage, which was to be introduced into circulation on 14th February 1966. The Royal Australian Mint holds a place in history as the first mint in Australia not to be a branch of the Royal Mint, London.

Since opening in 1965 the Mint has produced over eleven billion circulating coins and has the capacity to produce over two million coins per day, or over six hundred million coins per year.

The Royal Australian Mint has struck coins for a number of South Pacific nations. Export coins were first struck in 1969 for New Zealand and, since then, coins have been produced for Papua New Guinea, Tonga, Western Samoa, Cook Islands, Fiji, Malaysia, Thailand, Nepal, Bangladesh, Israel and Tokelau.