Medieval Slovak mint strikes first euro coins
KREMNICA, Slovakia (Reuters Life!) - Nestled within the walls of a medieval castle in Slovakia, a 700-year-old mint that once stamped coinage with the faces of European kings and queens produced its first euro coins on Tuesday.
Entering a new stage in its long history as Slovakia prepares to adopt the euro on January 1, there were neither pots of molten silver nor sweaty workmen hammering out coins.
Instead, Kremnica, one of the oldest continually functioning mints in the world, has six computerized machines that knock out 700 coins per minute, or about 1 billion a year.
The state-run mint, which received its license from Hungarian King Charles I in 1328, had for centuries benefited from an influx of German miners and rich gold deposits nearby, and authorities expected it to follow tradition and make Slovakia's version of the single currency.
Euro zone entry posed one of its toughest challenges yet, and it had to pass a strict audit to assess security and ensure it could produce currency that, except for the national "tails" side, would be identical to other euro coins.
"If you take the 10 cents with Bratislava castle on it, it must work in a vending machine in Portugal," said Igor Barat, the government's representative for euro adoption.
Kremnica has supplied currency to Paraguay, Venezuela, Costa Rica, India, Thailand, Nepal and other states.
The euro contract will keep its 230 employees busy for the rest of the year, said mint spokesman Jaroslav Setnicky, and it might have to add a third shift to hit a deadline to deliver 500 million Slovak coins, worth more 167 million euros, by December 15.
"It is ... a matter of prestige to make our own euro coins," he said.
(Editing by Michael Winfrey)
