Veridos Matsoukis: Global player in the market for high security documents

Interview for the newspaper Proto Thema and New Money, with journalist Stelios Morphidis.

The cases of Greek companies that have managed to make themselves, and by extension Greece, a business hub and innovation centre in their sector, through their operation and the innovation they produce, are unfortunately few and far between.

Veridos Matsoukis, the only company in Greece that prints high-security documents (ID cards, passports, etc. ), has managed over the last five years, with a barrage of investments in its Ilion plant, to do just that, having evolved into the Research, Development and Production Centre for the global market of one of the biggest players in the global market for high-security documents, Veridos, a joint venture between the German state mint Bundesdruckerei and Giesecke+Devrient (G+D).

"In 2023 we made around 35 million products, including 10 million ID cards, 9 million passports, 10 million plastic pages made available to third parties to be incorporated into passports. This year we will exceed 40 million products," says Dimitris Matsoukis, CEO of Veridos Matsoukis, in a discussion at the company's factory, where maximum security measures are observed.

The products produced in the factory are destined for Veridos' 40 customer countries: from Iceland, Denmark and Latvia to Jordan, Iraq, Yemen and Macau, as well as Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador and Venezuela. "Every week we have a different committee from our client countries who come to see how production is progressing," says Matsoukis.

Investment barrage

The Veridos Matsoukis factory, a joint venture between Veridos and the Matsoukis family (60-40%), formed in 2005, after decades of strategic cooperation between the two parties and with the inviolable condition that all profits be reinvested in the company, is today the only one that produces for Veridos, excluding the infrastructure of the state mint in Berlin, where passports and identity cards for German citizens are produced exclusively.

In fact, as Mr.Matsoukis explains, despite the barrage of investments made in the last five years, constantly expanding the production capacity of the Ilion plant, it still operates with three shifts, seven days a week, making necessary another large cycle of investments that may eventually lead to a second plant. What is remarkable about the speed with which the company is growing is the fact that in the last five years the number of staff has almost doubled, reaching 420 people, with the prospect of 500 at the end of this investment cycle!

"Relatively recently we hosted the Board of Directors of Veridos, which met here in Ilion, even deciding to extend the investment plan we had activated last year by 10 million euros, to reach a total of 30 million euros by 2026," says Matsoukis. "And this was deemed appropriate as by the end of 2023 we had already achieved all the targets we had set for 2025! So now we will go to another level and with the confidence we have from Veridos we will grow even more."

The last investment cycle opened in 2022 with the support of the EIB had three pillars. The expansion of the building infrastructure, new engineering and technological equipment for high-security products and R&D. In the first pillar, however, the company is facing some problems, as bureaucracy has put the brakes on the expansion of the third building in the complex. "If we ultimately don't make it, we will have to find space outside this area. We want in the next 12 months to be ready, so we'll see what we can do," Matsoukis says. However, the permit application has been pending for a year and a half already. "Of course, if you finally think about where we were 12-13 years ago, in the crisis, when we were chasing jobs and fighting to make ends meet, this seems like a luxury problem," he hastened to add.

In the three buildings of the factory today, the different materials are produced in separate lines that will eventually come together to create the passport or identity card. "Our strategic product is the passport. But this has several 'components', mainly plastic materials, which have to be joined together at the end to make the final product. And for each one, another material is required. It is, for example, different to integrate the chip and its antenna into a cover or the plastic page of a passport or plastic ID card. So a first stage of production is to make the carrier with the chip and the counterpart. This can then be integrated into the cover of the passport which becomes solid. Inside the passport you will have seen the plastic page which is flexible and on which the data is digitally laser engraved, which is much more secure than was previously done on the paper with inkjet. So it's a different production line for the cover, a different line for the plastic page and ultimately a different production line for the traditional passport.

And all of these end up later being consolidated by adhering to the strict standards set by governments," Matsoukis says. "ID cards and driving licences are based on the same technology, so the machines for the plastic pages of passports are also regulated for the production of the other products. It changes the size and of course extra technologies can be developed that might be used. That's also why we have our own R&D team working on new projects and ideas. There is another team in the group in Germany, but the tendency is to transfer it here in Athens, strengthening the corresponding Greek team, for the simple reason that the research activity must be close to production. Because a lot of testing on production lines is required," Matsoukis continues, underlining the confidence of the parent group.

Economic performance

Regarding the financial performance of Veridos Matsoukis in 2023, according to Mr Matsoukis, the company managed to exceed 70 million euros in turnover, with the prospect this year, based on the pipeline of contracts to be executed, to exceed 81 million euros. Earnings before interest and taxes in 2023 were EUR 4 million and net profit was EUR 2.5 million. "Everything will be reinvested in the company. That was the condition of the agreement we made in 2005. No dividends were to be paid to shareholders but the profits were to be used for the renewal and development of the company. So on the one hand our profits and on the other hand the close cooperation we have had with the EIB over the last 6-7 years, helping us in the investments we make, are the basis for the new investment plan as well. Some things will even be done through the Recovery Fund," he notes.

For Greece, Veridos Matsoukis now produces very little. "We have continued for 50 years to produce stamps, but this as a product is rapidly declining. People don't use mail anymore, it's mainly for philately. Before we devoted ourselves exclusively to passports, ID cards and driving licences, we printed other documents with customers from various organisations and banks. For example, we printed the blocks of cheques, passbooks, bonds. Also, tickets for various organisations, security forms such as marketing authorisations or FDA labels for medicines, paper stamps and so on. All this stopped in 2018, when we took the decision to focus on the three categories we specialise in today. It should be noted that the production of passports has been one of the main activities of Matsoukis S.A. -now Veridos Matsoukis- for decades, printing for dozens of countries around the world. We also produced Greek passports until about 2004, when the decision was taken to issue the -then- new electronic passports by the Hellenic Central Bank".

The Greek ID cards

Although the Greek company does not have a sales department, being linked to the headquarters in Germany, Mr Matsoukis declares his determination to enter the new competition that will be announced for the Greek ID cards. It should be noted that in the original tender, which was eventually cancelled, Veridos Matsoukis had entered into a joint venture with OTE and Byte.

"First of all, we want to see what the new tender will provide, however there is a will to re-enter. You know, it's also a matter of company profile. We are the only Greek company that produces something like this, every week we are visited by people from different countries to see the progress of their own orders and at the same time learn more about us and our business. And while we have a lot to show for other countries, we can't say anything about Greece, since the truth is that we don't produce anything for here.

This is what motivates us more than the job itself or the contract that may accompany the competition. When we submitted our proposal in the first tender, we said that this job would create 30 new jobs at the Ilion plant and we would go from 250 employees to 280. Today we are 420 and our production this year will exceed 40 million products, when the maximum required by that tender was 4 million ID cards per year! So I want to say that the company is not waiting for that tender to grow. It's more a matter of moral satisfaction!"