More than 200 staff have been involved a highly complex operation to distribute millions of new Euro notes and coins and collect Latvia’s former currency, Lats, from banks, businesses and ATMs around the country.

A fleet of 45 vans will cover more than 400,000km in a month of intense activity making sure G4S customers have the new Euro’s they need. Pre-pack consignments of cash were sent out to 6,000 retail and other premises, 600 ATMs have been converted and were filled with the new Euro’s ahead of midnight on the 31st December 2013.

The scale of the operation has been immense. The coins alone that will be processed as part of the changeover is enormous. In a normal month G4S Latvia process between 25 – 30 tonnes of coins. In the ‘Euro Roll-Out Month’ this will climb to a staggering 1,000 tonnes.

It is an incredibly challenging operation that relies on very close co-operation with Latvia’s Government, police and, of course, banking system, but as Paul Edwards, Regional Cash Director, G4S Europe says it is an area where the company has unrivalled capability. “We have considerable expertise in the Euro roll-out exercise, this is my fifth; and we are now the acknowledged experts in this field. Each time we do it we provide a better and more polished service for our clients.

I want to pay tribute to our team in Riga and staff at the four G4S cash centres in Latvia . They have worked tirelessly over the Christmas and New Year holiday period to make this go smoothly. Our operation is designed to give the customers the highest level of service that they expect.

There is still a month of very hard work before the operation is completed, but we have got off to fantastic start.”