The loonie's American trade secret revealed

(CTV.ca News Staff) To many, the loonie is considered to be as quintessentially Canadian as hockey, but new changes in the production of the coin have revealed it may not be as Canadian as many people think.

For the past two years, the raw materials, or blanks of the coin have been produced by the largest North American producer of zinc-based product: Jarden Zinc, an American company based in Tennessee.

"I had no idea they were being produced in the United States," Bret Evans of the Canadian Coin News told CTV. "I thought they were being produced in Winnipeg for the past ten years, so this came as a complete shock to me."

The American company began to produce the loonie when the Royal Canadian Mint was unable to find a supplier in Canada. Now, the Royal Canadian Mint has decided to move the production of the coin to its Winnipeg plant.

But Jarden Zinc, which produced 39 million blanks of the Canadian coin last year, holds the patent. As a result, for the Royal Canadian Mint to produce the coin, the manufacturing process will have to change.

The weight and colour of the coin specifications will be maintained, however the metal used in the manufacturing of the coin will change from bronze to brass. Evans says the general public will probably not notice the difference.

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*CTV.ca