The world's first purpose-built ePassport production facility was inaugurated yesterday at Bulebel, an investment of €6 million.
The 2,600-square-metre plant, built by De La Rue adjacent to its banknote printing facility, will print and assemble machine-readable and biometric passports.
The facility, inaugurated by Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi and blessed by Archbishop Paul Cremona, is planning to produce two million ePassports annually with the possibility of doubling this number.
Dr Gonzi said the partnership between the country and De La Rue went back several years and the company, which invests to achieve excellence, echoed the country's 2015 vision of being a centre of excellence in several sectors.
James Thorburn, managing director of De La Rue Identity Systems, said the company, through its banknote printing, had been operating from Malta for 32 years and supplied 40 governments with passports and identity card systems.
He said the market was growing fast due to the changes in cross-border environments. Describing the new plant as a "tremendous achievement", Mr Thorburn said the new operation employed 44 people. It is headed by Albert Zammit, a Maltese national who recently returned from Sri Lanka where he managed De La Rue's banknote printing factory for seven years.
Referring to the fact that De La Rue's employees will be transferred to the new plant, Dr Gonzi said this was the kind of flexibility Malta needed in its workforce. He used this point to appeal to trade unions to accept the fact that flexibility was an ingredient to the country's success.
Another important element, he said, was a reform agenda: "It is a reform agenda that will get us there... We will never be competitive if we go for make-do solutions or if we cut corners."
Dr Gonzi said the government was committed to continue pumping money in its workforce, through proper investment in education, another aspect which was undergoing reform.
"We have embarked on an ambitious reform programme that will enable us to continue attracting foreign direct investment into our economy," he said.
Over the past two years, Malta Enterprise had approved 41 new foreign direct investment projects and 29 expansions. This assistance was projected to amount to foreign investment of €165 million and generate over 3,600 jobs over the first three years of operation.
The work of De La Rue will involve embedding passports with an electronic chip that contains the same data as that printed on the document.
The high-tech passports come at a price as the embedded technology, which was compulsory according to EU regulations in the face of global terrorism, means travellers will have to pay more.
A person over 16, who previously paid just under €28 for a 10-year passport, will now pay €70 for a new biometric passport. The fee for a two-year passport for children under 10 will rise to €14 from €7 and that for a five-year passport for children aged between 10 and 16 will go up to €35 from €14. Applying for an urgent passport, which previously came at an additional fee of €11.64, will now cost €120.
The rise in tariffs was the result of higher costs to buy the blank passports, which went up from €3 to €30.