The name probably means nothing to you. However, it’s a safe bet that you have one of their products in your pocket or wallet. Born from the merger of Oberthur and Morpho in 2017, the French group Idemia is one of the largest bank card manufacturers in the world. Look on the back of yours to see if Idemia’s name is on it. In Europe, more than half of them are manufactured in its Vitré factory, north-east of Rennes (Ille-et-Vilaine). The cramped structure, which employs around 500 people, will have to move in 2024 to expand and support the strong development of its activity. At a time when a good number of payments and administrative acts are dematerialized, the good old blue card has no plans to disappear. With the approach of the end of year celebrations, some of them will even seriously heat up. To find out how these everyday objects were made, 20 minutes visited the highly secure Idemia factory in Vitré.
From the outside, the Idemia factory does not look like a top secret site, but you will not find a window on its facades. To enter the manufacturing enclosure, we had to part with our camera, our phone and even our old connected watch. Prohibited to film. Before setting foot in the airlock lined with an electrostatic coating that captures dust from shoes, we had to prove our identity, register and even offer our most beautiful mustachioed smile to snap a photo. Inside, the site sports the fairly classic features of a printing house. The smell of ink invades the nose and misters come to humidify the surrounding air. We innovate through the color, the material, the colors that will be lodged down to the edge of a few millimeters. “We print on PVC. We need to keep the humidity level between 50 and 60%. The finish must be neat because the cards are the banks’ brand image,” explains director Eric Le Quéré, to the noise of the imposing machines that never stop.
Armored vehicles to transport them
Here, three teams take turns to work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and issue 400 to 450,000 bank cards every day. “When they are finished, they have to be shipped quickly. We do not have the right to keep them for more than 24 hours,” continues the site manager. Ten to 20 armored vehicles leave each day to be transported to a personalization center where the precious names and numbers will be registered. “The law forbids us to do everything on the same site. When they leave us, the cards only contain half of the cryptodata,” says Yves Portalier, vice-president of Idemia in France. His company is proud to have been the first to use recycled PVC to design its cards, made up of four flexible pieces that must be cut and then baked at around 100 degrees.
With its 14,000 employees worldwide, the group is not specialized in “CB”. It also produces vital cards, SIM cards for Orange, US driver’s licenses, passports and access cards for many companies around the world. An ultra-competitive sector that does not know the crisis. Established on seven sites in France, Idemia achieved a turnover of 2.2 billion in 2021. And hopes to do at least as well in 2022.
Why the State invested in Idemia
In the Idemia factory in Vitré, some labels have been installed to signify that the State has invested here, allowing the purchase of machinery. Carried out as part of the France Relance plan, this financial aid aims to restore production independence to our country. “The objective is to maintain our supplies of strategic services. This production is clearly strategic. To remain secure, it must stay with us, ”explains Didier Doré, sub-prefect of Vitré-Fougères.