Fujitsu Frontech Wins Order for 1,000 Compact Bill Dispensing Units for Shanghai Subway Ticket Vending Machines

Currently, subway operators run subway networks in six cities in China: eight routes in Shanghai; eight routes in Beijing, three routes in Guangzhou, two routes in Shenzhen, one route in Tianjin and one route in Nanjing. In November 2008, the State Council of China announced a four trillion yuan (approximately 52 trillion yen) public infrastructure investment plan to be carried out by 2010. Investment in the railway infrastructure is considered a key element of this investment plan. In addition to the eight routes already in service, the Shanghai subway authority plans to open seven new routes in time for the opening of the Shanghai International Exposition, which is to be held between May 1 and October 31 of 2010. The ticket vending machines being installed in the stations on the seven new routes are Chinese electronics manufacturer-made units. Fujitsu Frontech received an exclusive order from these manufacturers for 1,000 units of the compact bill dispenser (User Flexible BDU), the major component in the ticket vending machines, and began delivering the User Flexible BDU in February 2009.

Since 2007, Fujitsu Frontech has been selling the User Flexible BDU, a compact bill dispensing unit aimed at global retail markets. While conventional bill dispensing units can be customized only in one or two ways, the User Flexible BDU can be customized a maximum of 680 ways using six headings, by providing the bill ejection unit and bill cassette in modular form. Furthermore, the User Flexible BDU" is capable of handling various types of banknotes of different countries with security features that make them difficult to counterfeit by adopting the friction-feed method to separate bills by pressing a rubber pad against the transport-roller.

User Flexible BDU came to be adopted by major manufacturers of self-checkout systems, who gave its friction-feed performance high marks. This led us to start mass-producing the User Flexible BDU early, with the result that a total of seventeen thousand units have shipped to date. By promoting the product in China, Fujitsu Frontech has succeeded in winning a large order. Fujitsu Frontech's success is partly due to the reputation it has earned through its accomplishments with deliveries to ATM manufacturers and the maintenance support it has provided to them. This marks the first time that a Japanese-made dispensing unit is being adopted for use with ticket vending machines for the traffic networks of major Chinese cities.

China, which has experienced remarkable economic development, is now placing priority on using energy resources efficiently and implementing environmental measures, and plans to significantly expand the subway network infrastructure to cover sixty cities in the future. China is also planning to build numerous high-speed railway networks linking major Chinese cities. Fujitsu Frontech, which aims to continue developing and delivering high-performance, high-quality products for these types of traffic network, expects to ship fifteen thousand units of bill dispensers annually in 2012, for ATM vendors and ticket vending machine manufacturers in China.