French Smart Card manufacturer Gemplus International SA has turned in 75% growth in first the six months, to the equivalent of $192m. Excluding revenues from the personalization and plastic card activities of DataCard Inc, acquired last September, the group achieved a 37% growth. Total revenues for the previous year amounted to $296m. The Gemenos company said the figures illustrate the considerable weight of the plastic card on the US market, and pointed to continued demand in the Asia-Pacific area since the region’s large-scale adoption of the Smart Card. During the period Gemplus announced two new production facilities. The group will take a 51% stake in Tianjin Gemplus Smart Card Co, a joint venture with China’s Tianjin Telephone Equipment Factory in Tianjin, China (CI No 2,880), and Mexico City will provide the second site. A new commercial subsidiary was established in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Its personalization centers in Sarcelles and Paris have been expanded, and will provide capacity to manufacture about 20m cards by the year-end. Earlier this month the French company joined a new consortium along with Visa International, French banks Banque Nationale de Paris and Societe Generale and France Telecom, designed to integrate the French experience with chip cards into existing electronic payment standards (CI No 2,953). Conversions were done at $0.19 to the French Franc.
