In May 2004 Correos published two new public tenders; the first for the acquisition of 79 new franking balances to be connected to the Postal IRIS system, and the second for 168 units that could work independently or be linked to IRIS (the software installed in Spain post offices). In agreement with the proposal offered by the Spanish company EPELSA, Correos selected 5 post offices in Madrid province for testing the new prototypes of franking balance model DL-Iris/Postal.
The 5 prototypes have the numbers 4060, 4529, 4559, 5018 and 6562. Initially installed for a test period of 4 to 6 weeks, the lack of incidents and the good performance have caused this period to be extended indefinitely. The most part of this prototypes were installed in post offices with high productivity, and many ATM designs have been used by this balances.
The ATMs issued with these balances have identical characteristics to this ones issued with balances ET-RL, because the head printing is also hi-res (8 dots/mm).
This is
done to prevent the possible falsification of ATMs from blank
labels, but it's still an innocent and totally insufficient system
if it does not go accompanied of other much more drastic measures. At
the moment it's only another curiosity or rarity for collectors ...
The receipts are processed by the software Iris postal system, and are identical to this ones issued by the other balances. During the third week of October 2004 began the installation of the 79 new franking balances of the first tender of Correos and won again by the Epelsa company. The new balances Epelsa DL-Iris/Postal are identical to the prototypes, they work connected to the Iris system, and also all the printing characteristics remain, especially the issue of 6-digits ATMs or the printing of the black vertical lines on the blank labels. The numbers of these balances are included between 7613 and 7691, both inclusively. The installation is being made during the third quarter of 2004 in post offices distributed by all the country. It's expected that all the new future balances in Spain will have these same characteristics. In the mid term the exists also the possibility of the removal of the totality of the balances Epelsa ET-RLa/Iris, this ones with more years in service and printing the ATMs of 4 and 5 large digits, by new balances DL-Iris.
© J. Jove - M. Sans. ATEEME. Variable value stamps study group. All rights reserved This page was created: 20.07.04. Last updated: 21.11.04 . English edition rewritted by S. Goodman (04.10.04) |