The bitter mint<br><br>The Royal Mint and the Treasury are accused of reneging on a longterm deal with the Birmingham Mint. Edward Simpkins looks at a dispute heading for the High Court<br><br>A coil of metal feeds into one of the huge juddering blue machines and shiny silver Namibian 10 cent pieces spew out of the other end.<br><br>Production of coins has been going on at the Birmingham Mint, the world's largest and oldest independent mint, for more than 150 years. It has customers on every continent, but a dispute with its former business partner, the Royal Mint which is controlled by the Treasury could see the coinmaking tradition brought to an end.<br><br>That would be a disaster for the firm's 160 employees who face an uncertain future in one of the areas of highest unemployment in Birmingham as the increasingly bitter conflict between the two coinmakers heads towards the High Court later this year.<br><br>The Birmingham Mint, which is owned by its management and backed by GE Capital, has operated from the same Icknield Street site in Birmingham's Jewellery buy jordans Quarter since 1860. The moneymaking starts in the furnaces at one end of the 3.5 acre factory. In go carefully measured proportions of metals such as zinc, nickel, copper and tin.<br><br>At the other end of the factory there are hundreds of hoppers of shiny coins and tokens being weighed into oil drums for despatch to central banks, casinos and mints around the world.<br><br>In between there are coils of metal, hoppers brimming with everything from halfmade euros to Zimbabwean dollars, and machines for casting, cutting, rolling, pressing, galvanizing, annealing (tempering) and plating.<br><br>All around, bluesuited workers attend the machines, fetching and carrying with forklift trucks. It is a busy scene, but not as busy as it once was. A decline in work after the falling out with the Royal Mint has meant redundancies over the past year that have left the factory quieter than its bosses would like.<br><br>For the past 40 years Birmingham Mint had been part of a consortium with the Royal Mint, a government executive agency that is run by the Treasury. The Royal Mint provides all the UK's coinage but is also expected to bid commercially for work overseas. And it used to do so in partnership with De La Rue, the bank note printers, and the Birmingham Mint.<br><br>The deal was that the Royal Mint would do the marketing and that it would hand about one third of the manufacturing contracts for foreign coins and blanks (the unstamped coins ready for finishing) to the Birmingham Mint. It was a deal that had stood both parties in good stead.<br><br>The Royal Mint was protected from competition while the consortium business provided about 40 per cent of Birmingham's revenues. Birmingham made of profit from that last year.<br><br>However, in June last year the Royal Mint, which made a loss of on turnover of in its latest published accounts, pulled out of the agreement. Despite a year of negotiation, it has not been able to reach a settlement with the privately owned coin maker. In July, Birmingham Mint claimed in the High Court that it was owed in lost business.<br><br>Overnight the Royal Mint had turned from ally to enemy, says Roland Vernon, the managing director of the Birmingham Mint. "For about 40 years there was a loose agreement with the Royal Mint, termed the Consortium, which is mentioned each year in their accounts," he says.<br><br>"Last year they gave notice of termination of this agreement so we attempted to obtain details relating to the allocation we believe we were entitled to, but the Royal Mint refused to provide us with the information. In July we reluctantly had to institute a breach of contract claim."<br><br>Since then, Vernon says, the Royal Mint has started to compete highly aggressively against its former partner. "Since the Royal Mint tore up the agreement, two things have happened," he says. "They have refused to settle and they have been dumping [selling at an unfair, low price] in overseas markets."<br><br>Now the Birmingham Mint is finding it tough to compete against its former partner. Intriguingly, neither the Royal Mint nor the Treasury were prepared to comment on any of this, in spite of repeated requests for information from The Telegraph.<br><br>Industry sources allege that in recent competitive tenders overseas, where mints from several countries are bidding to provide coins or blanks, all the bidders come within 2 or 3 per cent of one another, but that the Royal Mint is able to undercut the market and bids 20 per cent lower than its competitors to win the business.<br><br>The Birmingham Mint says it is considering making a complaint to the Office of Fair Trading and to the Competition Commission in Brussels. Vernon points out that the Royal Mint is in the enviable position of producing all the UK's coinage, which provides it with a platform that allows it to bid cheaply for overseas contracts.<br><br>"We believe that the prices the Royal Mint is offering do not comply with government guidelines on how stateowned companies should compete overseas," Vernon says. "We are happy to compete but it has got to be on a fair basis and on a level playing field," he adds.<br><br>He would like to see a shake up in the way the Royal Mint operates. It is the only national mint in Europe that doesn't buy its blanks (unstamped coins) in from private companies. "We want the opportunity to supply UK coinage blanks," Vernon says, "and we are confident that we can supply them at a rate that would give the taxpayer better value for money."<br><br>The manner in which the Royal Mint bids for overseas contracts has recently been the subject of an investigation by the Serious Fraud Office, following allegations that bribes may have been paid to foreign officials in order to win contracts.<br><br>The SFO was informed in July and last week decided to launch a fullblown investigation alongside the Ministry of Defence police. It is probing up to 10 allegedly irregular payments made by the Royal Mint between 1996 and 1999.<br><br>The Royal Mint is likely to find itself in the spotlight over the coming months. It jordan 5 raging bull has still to produce its accounts for the year to March, which in previous years it has produced in July.<br><br>Meanwhile, the infrared 6s workforce at its Birminghambased rival have been writing to their MPs to ask for help. Birmingham MPs, led by Clare Short, in whose constituency the mint lies, have been briefed and Vernon is planning to ambush Ruth Kelly, the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, at the Labour Party conference which starts today.<br><br>He says: "I'll be asking her why the Government is propping up an ailing public sector company at the expense of an efficiently run private sector company."
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