BÜRKLE delivers large-scale plastic card press project for Korean market

Robert Bürkle GmbH, headquartered in Freudenstadt, Germany, has delivered three additional german designed new press lines for the Korean plastic card market. Build and supplied by the production site of its subsidiary in Shanghai, Bürkle Machinery Shanghai. The presses will be used in the production of various cards in the course of the next year. In detail, these are three SMARTLAM CHK presses, which are primarily designed for high-volume production of a wide range of card types. These investments will in part expand capacities but also replace older systems purchased more than 20 years ago with the latest state-art-the-art lamination technologies.

For more than 40 years, BÜRKLE laminating presses have been present in the plastic card market. With today's compact design and constantly evolving process and control technology, the presses are the world's leading production solution. Among other applications, they are used for the lamination of RFID cards, bank cards, passports and ID cards. "We are proud to have once again equipped an entire market with our technology. The three individual projects underline we have found the right solutions for the production of plastic cards over the last years and decades," comments BÜRKLE project manager Mathias Kern. The successful installation was completed during the difficult period of the pandemic.

The CHKs will be used to produce dual interface cards in addition to banking and PETG cards. Dual interface cards are smart cards whose chip offers two interfaces. In addition to dual interface cards, hybrid cards also offer two data interfaces. In contrast to hybrid cards, where two different chips or a chip and a magnetic stripe are implemented in one card, in dual interface cards one chip maps both interfaces. This means that the card can be addressed via a contact or contactless (RFID).