Producer
Crane Currency (Crane NXT)
Maker of US banknote (currency) paper and security features; cotton/abaca substrate.
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Inputs supplied
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Goods downstream
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Facilities
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Stories
What they make
1 input Crane Currency (Crane NXT) supplies
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What else they do
Business segments
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Currency paper
Micro-optic security threads
Banknote security features
Authentication (Crane NXT)
Intelligence
What's known
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Concentration2024
The paper that US dollars are printed on comes from one company: Crane Currency, which has supplied the US Treasury with currency substrate for over 140 years — a single, multigenerational sole-source relationship for the physical material of the world's reserve currency. US banknotes are not wood paper but a cotton-linen blend, and Crane makes it. So the literal substance of the dollar — the thing in every wallet and, in effect, the backing of global trade — is manufactured by one private firm under a contract stretching back to the 19th century. It's an extraordinary concentration hiding in plain sight: the most important currency on earth is printed on paper from a single supplier, and that quiet dependency sits beneath the entire dollar-based financial system without anyone outside the trade ever thinking about it.
Crane Currency (Crane NXT) ↗Did you know2024
Crane is also the maker of the advanced anti-counterfeiting feature on the $100 bill — the blue "Motion" micro-optic security thread, whose images of bells and 100s appear to move as you tilt the note. That micro-optic technology, embedding thousands of microscopic lenses, is a serious piece of optical engineering, used in banknotes worldwide and explored for brand protection. So a currency-paper company is also a micro-optics technology firm, and the security of money against counterfeiting depends on a few specialists like Crane staying ahead of forgers. The defense of the currency is an arms race in materials and optics, run by the same handful of companies (Crane, De La Rue, Giesecke+Devrient) that also make the money — so the people who print and supply the cash are also the ones securing it, a tight, concentrated trust nexus where physical-materials science quietly underwrites confidence in money itself.
Crane Currency (Crane NXT) ↗