PowerForward provides customized plastic card and mailing equipment for large government projects in North and South America, the European Community, Asia and Australia.

Government card projects are large and complex often taking years from start to finish – policy and program development, legislation, software and database development, card design and manufacture, and finally card distribution.

Often that last step – getting each card to the correct citizen – is not considered until many months, even years into the project. Delays or errors in distribution can undermine the goals of the project, embarrassing the government or even resulting in illegal activity.

Plan ahead to successfully distribute your cards right on schedule. Consider the capabilities of PowerForward’s customized card distribution equipment when planning card distribution timing, logistics and security.

No matter what type of card or how many, we can help you distribute them to your citizens – efficiently and securely.

You may be developing a multi-purpose national ID card for proof of citizenship and use of government services, or a single purpose card for drivers’ licenses, social security or health services. These may be simple magnetic stripe cards or smart cards. Your volumes may be 5 million or several hundred million. PowerForward can develop customized plastic card distribution equipment to meet your project requirements.

A PowerForward plastic card mailing system automates all steps from verifying cards and printing personalized carriers through enveloping.

PowerForward’s end-to-end automation reduces handling errors and the potential for fraud – thus helping to ensure that the correct card gets to the right person.

In addition, system features ensure that cards and carriers are perfectly synchronized and tracked throughout the process:

• Personalized letters or other carriers printed under system control based on accessing your database(s)
• Cards can be printed, encoded or, in the case of smart cards, initialized with appropriate data
• Card and the carrier inspected and confirmed using Vision system
• Defective cards and any mismatched cards and carriers diverted and tracked without interrupting production

PowerForward systems operate reliably at high volumes. At its speed of 7200 cards per hour, our Card Mailing System will conservatively produce 10,000,000 card mailings per year, running 2 shifts, 5 days per week. And it will keep up this pace for 8 to 10 years.

To issue 100,000,000 cards in one year, for example, we would recommend 12 systems - 10 plus 2 for redundancy and, backup - and suggest three secure locations with four machines at each site.

If your project parameters allow, distribution volumes can be optimized by attaching cards and accumulating carriers for multiple family members (e.g., health cards for 2 adults and one child).

Of course, not all cards are mailed. Some are picked up by the card recipient for logistical or security reasons. In this case the PowerForward system can sort the cards according to local distribution depot. It can even process some cards for mailing and others for pick up within the same production run.

The same card distribution equipment can be used for reissuing cards – typically about 15 percent of the total volume per year - and for sending information to card holders periodically.

PowerForward Card Mailing Systems readily adapt to running without cards so you can use them for distributing personalized letters with inserts to some or all cardholders.

We are experienced in responding to government procurements and flexible in how we bid our products. If you are looking for a prime contractor to bid on your complete card project, we can participate as a member of the prime contractor’s team of suppliers.

If you prefer to obtain your plastic card mailing equipment directly, we will bid on your equipment Request for Proposal or Quotation (RFP or RFQ). In either case we can take responsibility for integrating and quoting on all the portions of our integrated system, including components we do not manufacture, i.e., printers and enveloping components.

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