An ATM-protection product seeks to combat new criminal methods of robbing the machines, including using explosives. Pictured: Operations Director Colin Doyle demonstrates a Gryphon security device at Lockpoint’s North Shields headquarters, and Gemma Carne, customer support.
Although mainly designed to make ATMs an unattractive target for raids by armed gangs, North Shields-based Lockpoint notes that in the three recent explosive attacks on ATMs across the UK, just one machine was fitted with its Gryphon; and that was the only machine that was not destroyed and from which no cash was consequently taken. Lockpoint reports a rise in turnover and operating profit in provisional figures for the financial year just ended. Turnover has almost doubled, from £1.2m to £2.34m, while profit before interest, tax and exceptional items is expected to be in the region of £0.5m. Lockpoint says its product is now fitted to a cash points across the UK, with banks and cash machine manufacturers among customers and users. The device has a set of four interlocking steel doors connected by electronic locking so that no more than one door – accessing one of four cash drawers — can ever be open at the same time. This ‘wall of steel’ can be retro-fitted to an ATM without compromising the manufacturer’s integrity, at a unit cost of about £2,000. Gateshead-based Responsive Engineering Ltd does the Gryphon’s manufacture and assembly, and contract manufacturer Opsol UK builds the electronic circuitry in Cramlington, Northumberland. Among the first clients to choose the Gryphon in the UK has been Tesco, which, since 2010, has installed the device on most of its 3,000 ATMs at stores. The supermarket chain had been concerned at the growth in attacks on cash-in-transit providers, which put its own staff and customers at risk. Tim White, Tesco Head of Security, said: “I am particularly pleased with the dramatic reduction in injuries to cash-in-transit staff, together with the significant reductions in both attacks and financial losses. The collaboration between Tesco, G4S and Lockpoint is evidence of both innovation and true partnership.”
In 2012, Lockpoint sold nearly 1,200 Gryphons, worth more than £2m, and Operations Director Colin Doyle predicts further growth in 2013 as the company looks at overseas markets. Doyle said: “Although our Gryphon has proved its worth over the past three years by preventing losses and reducing danger for both security professionals and members of the public, we estimate that about 80 per cent of all the nation’s ATMs are still unprotected by the Gryphon, which is the only device that makes ATM robbery so difficult that it is increasingly less attractive to robbers. Our product resists attacks by drills, grinders and oxyacetylene torches and there is now evidence that it can also withstand attacks by gangs using explosives.”
Lockpoint is now in talks with one customer to explore a joint venture to put the Gryphon through testing to determine how well it will defend cash from robbers armed with explosives. The company is also reporting increasing interest in its second product, the Wyvern, an automated employee-operated central door lock, for banks and shops such as jewellers.
