Word: contractive
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...company, you would think. But as with all businesses, not so easy as it sounds. The money in question is U.S. currency, more specifically the very high-tech paper used to print it. The Appleton, Wis., papermaker planned an expensive makeover to compete for the $400 million contract to supply the government with currency paper when the contract went up for bid this spring. Appleton, an employee-owned company, figured to spend more than $70 million upgrading one of its three paper mills, enabling it to produce watermarks, machine-readable micropatterns and embedded threads and metal fibers--the gold standard...
...foreign suppliers unless no domestic source exists. A Crane competitor, the British paper manufacturer De La Rue, has threatened to complain to the World Trade Organization about the unfair advantage the Conte Amendment gives Crane. Congress also threw up a hurdle for Crane's American competitors. By setting the contract's length at four years, the law makes it difficult for companies without extremely deep pockets to justify investing in the security technology needed for making currency paper...
...anything else, not even defense." The Secret Service insists that money must be produced and printed within the U.S. to maintain security, but the GAO found no reason to bar foreign companies from making currency if they do so on U.S. soil. "Then, there's the four-year contract," Kolbe continues. "What company, with the capitalization costs it takes to get into this business, can take on such a financial burden...
Lansing Crane calls the contract a square deal, given the exacting specifications. "Any additional costs come from our need for the highest, most modern security technology," he says. And he has his own powerful allies in Congress, notably Massachusetts Senators John Kerry and Ted Kennedy, who have parried both Kolbe...
...might its contract. Officials have tried to relax some rules to open the bidding process to more competitors. For example, companies can now provide representative samples of their products instead of actual currency paper. But absent legislative action, the Treasury is limited in what...