Some problems have been encountered with the new £1 coin, it is reported by Ian Easton, managing director of Instance Automatics, the makers of the Maxx Grab range of crane machines.
Easton reports that the samples of the new coin sent out initially by the Royal Mint to interested parties differed slightly from those actually being circulated. Easton said that his company had ordered samples in December of 2015 to prepare for the introduction of the new coin.
They then programmed coin mechanisms to take the new coin. “But we found that the coins we had were slightly different from those of independent programmers.” He said that the sets of coins had been ordered at different times.
Responses by the Mint, he said, had differed too. Easton was concerned, he said, that some operators might find that their coin acceptors might reject large numbers of the new coins. He said that if this happened on a large scale then it could be a “complete disaster” for the industry.
