Quality & Innovation

Focus on quality

At Portals, we’ve been making paper for the world’s leading security printers for over 300 years, constantly refining our processes and driving innovation to meet the needs of both customers and partners. We are trusted to deliver to the highest quality standards, on time, every time, and are proud to produce the products we do.

Such vitally important documents, passports and security certificates require the upmost of respect and attention to detail to ensure they are fit for purpose and continually stay one step ahead of the counterfeiters. We achieve this by working hard to guarantee consistent levels of both quality and innovation.

The sections below give an insight into how we approach these fundamental areas of excellence.

Quality inspection and testing

Throughout the entire paper making process, we test process hundreds of critical parameters to ensure that manufacturing conditions are stable.

This includes on-line advanced, automatic systems monitoring grammage, thickness, colour, porosity and moisture in real time. Our sophisticated camera systems constantly observe the paper during its production, verifying the watermark quality and position, monitoring thread positions and also checking for any visual defects. Our inspection stations are located at every stage throughout manufacture, to ensure conformity to customer requirements.

Off machine, we ensure numerous samples from the continuous reels are tested against the approved customer specification by trained personnel using a range of sophisticated equipment in our temperature and humidity-controlled quality laboratories. Samples are then retained at the packing stage for our own archive, for our customers and as a point of reference for future business.

Innovation

Our innovation approach is built around 3 pillars to support our customers current and future needs for security and durability.

Our dedicated subject matter experts (SMEs) and New Product Introduction team work closely together to develop and introduce new, often bespoke, security features for a wide range of uses. In addition to product and feature innovation, Portals also innovates and invests in its manufacturing processes to make production continually more efficient and sustainable.

Our New Product Introduction team work closely with our pool of security feature suppliers to ensure that we are ready to incorporate or wholly innovate new, complementary security features suited to the secure document in question.

Our SMEs, covering all areas across the business, are constantly working on the identification of innovative solutions to enhance our processes, procedures and products.

This dual-approach ensures that our products continue to evolve, maintaining the highest levels of quality and security to keep us one step ahead of the forgers and counterfeiters.

As well as our following own in-house R&D processes looking at improvement, integration and innovation, we work closely with all of our suppliers and partners to develop and design new features and approaches. Our SMEs also maintain regular contact with the specialist fraud investigation teams to further understand and evaluate new potential ways of attacking our documents, constantly keeping our collective knowledge current and up to date.

Expertise

  • Our quality and inspection systems are world class
  • Facilitating over 3000 automated and manual checks across the site every day
  • Portals prides itself on having highly experienced Subject Matter Experts in every part of the business with several patents to our name too

Craftsmanship

  • Our automated quality control checks are backed up by expert manual hand and eye checks by our highly experienced team members
  • Our innovation processes start with pen to paper and experimenting in the lab to maximise a process before transitioning to production environment

Innovation

  • The criminals don’t ever stand still and nor do we; we are driven to always stay ahead of the counterfeiter and the threats they bring
  • We build in and integrate security at every stage of the project; finding new ways to fuse craftmanship with technology

USP's

  • Trademarked and registered security features including Cornerstone ™, Textmark®, and Skylight®
  • Bespoke quality control and world class monitoring systems
  • True experts within their field producing security papers for more than 100 countries globally

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