The Royal Mint will stop making coins from scratch after 1,100 years, instead having its staff extract gold from circuit boards

The Royal Mint plans to stop producing coins from scratch at its Welsh facility from December and will instead use staff to extract gold from laptop circuit boards, This is Money can reveal.

The Royal Mint, the UK’s oldest mint, has been producing coins for more than 1,100 years, but a source has told us that trend is about to end.

Instead of producing its own coins from raw steel, the Mint will now buy “blanks” (plain discs that have not been struck with the coin’s design) from abroad when supplies run low.

The company is expected to import the blanks from countries including Germany and Turkey, and will only print them at its Llantrisant plant rather than making them from scratch, a source within the Royal Mint said.

This follows news that the Treasury has not placed any new orders with the Royal Mint for one and two pence coins this year due to a decline in cash usage.

Today, the Royal Mint purchases steel, which factory workers roll to the correct gauge, press into pieces and coat with copper or nickel.

But that will no longer be the case and he is now looking to sell his coin blank production facility, This is Money has learned.

“They have said they will not be taking any more orders from overseas but will continue to supply the UK market,” the source told This is Money.

“But they will not have the facilities to manufacture their own coins, they will bring them from somewhere else and have them stamped at the Mint.”

The person wished to remain anonymous because he is a current employee of the Royal Mint.

This is Money has been told that the Royal Mint will install a “gold separation” facility at the two plants where the raw coins were previously produced.

Staff who used to produce coins will be diverted to breaking up circuit boards as the Mint moves toward recovering gold from phones and laptops.

“They are slowly ramping up the gold recovery business,” the source said.

As part of the shift towards gold recovery, 200 employees have been offered positions at the gold recycling plant, avoiding redundancies.

However, a source told This is Money that more than 120 staff have left the Mint as part of an early release scheme offering a full year’s salary of up to £30,000.

Those remaining, he said, are on reduced shifts but will receive their full pay until December.

They said the plants, furnaces and presses for plating and cutting coin blanks will be closed.

“The only minting machinery they maintain are the presses where they stamp the coins,” he said.

Of the approximately 40 coin presses currently in use by the Royal Mint, only two or three will be retained to press coins when demand requires it, in order to supply the UK market.

These will be housed in a museum next to the Royal Mint site in South Wales, so tourists will be able to see how the coins are made, the source said.

Commemorative coins will be pressed there and, when the need arises, they will be transformed into coins for circulation.

“They are moving the commemorative coins to the presses at the Mint Experience so that the presses will continue to operate there. If they need UK coins, they will have to mint them on those presses,” he added.

A Royal Mint spokesperson told This is Money: ‘We remain fully committed to creating the UK’s currency, which has been at the heart of the Royal Mint for 1,100 years.

“We have the facilities and capacity to manufacture coins of all denominations when required, and we continue to work closely with Her Majesty’s Treasury to meet the demand from the UK’s cash centres.”

In April, the Mint revealed that it will no longer produce foreign coins, despite having done so for nearly 700 years.

Blame it on the decline in cash usage

As the UK’s oldest company, the Royal Mint has been producing coins for over 1,100 years.

However, only 12 percent of transactions last year were made in cash, according to UK Finance, and as many as 39 percent of the population are largely cashless.

Still, 2.6 percent of the population still relies on cash as their primary payment method.

“It’s sad, that’s the way the world is going,” the source said. “People are using fewer and fewer coins. If people see the Royal Mint closing, they might start using coins again.

“Once the facilities break down and disappear, it will be very difficult to get them up and running again.”

The Royal Mint’s currency division posted a loss of £13.1m in 2022/23, down from £4.5m the year before. Mint employees have been told to expect a loss of £30m this year, the source said.

“None of us can imagine how such a huge loss will occur,” the source said.

The source said the decision means the Mint’s casting, rolling and die-cutting plant and its annealing, pickling and plating plant will be closed by the end of the year.

This follows reports that the Treasury has not placed any new orders for one and two pence coins in the coming years, due to the growing reliance on cashless payments across the country.

The Treasury has also not ordered any new coins of any kind to be minted this year.