About Us: Facility Expansion 1991-1996
The selection of Fort Worth came after an extensive site search with over 80 candidate cities. Eleven finalist were chosen from this group and met the basic requirement of providing direct non-stop commercial air transportation to the Federal Reserve Banks of Kansas City, Dallas, and San Francisco, and most of their branches. The eleven finalist cities included: Dallas, Houston, Fort Worth, Denver, Las Vegas, Salt Lake City, Los Angeles, Oakland, San Diego, Phoenix, and Seattle.
During the selection process, the Bureau of Engraving and Printing received four proposals to donate land and a building for the facility. Each of these offers was carefully reviewed and evaluated against predetermined criteria. The proposal from the City of Fort Worth emerged as the best proposal with the optimum combination of land, production facility, and security elements.
The Western Facility is a single floored, modern plant and has resulted in substantial cost savings through enhanced production efficiency and reduced transportation costs to the targeted Federal Reserve Banks. The ground breaking ceremony for the facility occurred on June 7, 1989, and the official opening took place on April 26, 1991.
The Bureau's Western Currency Facility has produced currency for the Federal Reserve Districts of Dallas, Kansas City, Atlanta, Chicago, St. Louis, Minnesota, Cleveland, Richmond, and San Francisco. The facility in its original configuration was capable of producing four billion notes on a two-shift, five-day work week basis. A new plant layout completed in 1995 has expanded the plant's capacity to 4.5 billion notes per year. The Western Currency Facility produced 4.1 billion notes in 1996. The facility provides expansion potential and alleviates some of the concerns caused by the annual increase in the currency program level.
Since 1862, the Bureau of Engraving and Printing had produced all our nation's currency in Washington, DC. The present Washington facility, which is over 80 years old, required improved efficiency for modern, high volume security document manufacturing.
