Innovia Group is hopeful of winning the contract to provide the base material for the Bank of England’s new £20 polymer banknote.

The Wigton firm is already supplying its Guardian substrate for the Bank’s first polymer £5 note, featuring Winston Churchill, which enters circulation next autumn, followed by a £10 note depicting Jane Austen in 2017.

The Bank says the polymer £20 will feature an artist – it has yet to decide who – and should enter circulation in three to five years’ time.

It has started a competitive tender process for the supply of the polymer.

Innovia is front runner as the Bank’s established supplier and the world leader in this technology. Guardian is used by 24 countries, including Australia, Canada and Mexico.

Mark Robertshaw, chief executive of Innovia Group, said: “It’s a competitive tender and the Bank will have a set of criteria. It’s our job to make a compelling proposition.”

He welcomed the Bank’s chief cashier, Victora Cleland, CORR to Wigton last Friday NOV 6 to open the production line that will manufacture the polymer for the Bank. She unveiled a plaque to mark the occasion.

Innovia has spent £15m setting up the line, which uses its unique ‘bubble’ process to make a polymer film known as Clarity C.

This will be coated at a purpose-built opacification plant, also at Wigton, before being sent for printing at a De La Rue’s high-security bank note press in Essex. Overall, Innovia has invested £40m and is creating 80 jobs.

Because the notes last longer, the move to polymer should save the Bank of England £10m a year. Each note will incorporate one or more transparent windows to make them harder to counterfeit.

And a hand-held device, the Verus, can check if the polymer is Innovia’s Clarity C, instantly identifying forgeries printed on any other polymer.

Ms Cleland said: “Counterfeiters have been a challenge to the Bank for centuries.

“Today’s bank notes have intricate designs and more and more security features but we are still striving for improvement.

“We decided in 2013 that the best way of achieving this was to move to polymer. We had a three-year research and development programme, talked to other central banks and we held a consultation speaking to members of the public and industry.

“There was overwhelming support from the public – 87 per cent of those that gave feedback were in favour of the move to polymer.”

Innovia will produce the material for 2bn bank notes over the next five years.

Ms Cleland toured the site and saw the opacification plant, built by Story Construction, which is being commissioned.

And she told The Cumberland News that, despite increased use of debit and credit cards and online payment methods such as PayPal, cash was here to stay. She added: “I see notes and coins continuing for a long, long time. We are seeing demand for notes growing by five or six per cent a year.”