The Egyptian government is planning to call in all the 4.5 million or so vehicle plates and replace them with a new registration system using a combination of letters and numbers. The Siegenbased firm Erich Utsch has been awarded the contract.

Up to now Cairo car drivers simply passed on their number plates to others after deregistering their old vehicles and sending them to the scrap heap. As a result, a lot of doubles have ended up in circulation. The firm Utsch is a market leader in license plate technology with an annual turnover of approximately half a billion euros. The new Cairo plates will have holographic security features and will be fitted with a tampersafe attachment system. Our reporter Hagen Tober was there to watch the number plates being produced and delivered.