When border control officers look at a Latvian passport in the near future, they won’t just see a standard biometric document; they will see some of the most advanced identity technology on the market.
Latvia’s Office of Citizenship and Migration Affairs has officially awarded a major contract to Veridos to deliver 1.25 million next-generation electronic passports. Partnering with the Portuguese state printer INCM, Veridos secured the contract by outperforming competitors on both technical quality and cost-efficiency.
The deal locks in a comprehensive package, including the delivery of the ePassports, a centralized data personalization system, and five years of technical service and maintenance.
The centerpiece of Latvia’s new travel documents are the ultra-secure, colour-personalised polycarbonate data pages. Historically, laser-engraving on rugged polycarbonate meant sacrificing colour, resulting in grayscale images. Veridos is bypassing this limitation by deploying its proprietary CLIP-ID (Color Laser Image on Polycarbonate) technology.
The technology allows for exceptionally high colour fidelity, making it significantly easier for border agents to visually verify a traveller’s identity.
By integrating the colour photo directly into the polycarbonate layers, the documents are virtually impossible to forge or alter without destroying the card itself.
To handle the on-site document personalization, Veridos is integrating specialised equipment from industrial automation expert IAI, a proven system already used in several global ID deployments.
This contract is the continuation of a historic relationship. Veridos, a joint venture between security giants Giesecke+Devrient and Bundesdruckerei, has been partnering with Latvia since 1991, the year the Baltic nation restored its independence.
“Latvia and Veridos have a close and long-standing partnership, so we are very pleased that we will be able to continue to work together in the future and provide real added value to citizens via our solutions,” said Marc-Julian Siewert, CEO of Veridos. “We are proud to have such a technologically advanced country as a partner.”
