Ukraine’s central bank explains coin-destruction purchase as 800 tonnes pile op
Photo: NBU press service

Ukraine’s central bank has accumulated around 800 tonnes of 1-, 2-, 5- and 25-kopeck coins that were officially withdrawn from circulation in 2019, prompting the regulator to purchase specialised equipment to destroy them, the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) said on Thursday.

LIGA.net reported that the tender to supply the new equipment, concluded in December 2025, was won by Slovak company Monea Coin Technology.

Ukraine’s central bank explains coin-destruction purchase as 800 tonnes pile op
Photo: Monea Coin Technology

According to the NBU, the coins continue to be returned because the deadline for their withdrawal has been extended until the end of martial law and for an additional 90 days thereafter. In addition, the central bank began the gradual withdrawal of 10-kopeck coins in October 2025 and has already collected about 3.1 million of them.

The regulator estimates that 5–6% of 10-kopeck coins may still return from circulation, bringing the total volume of coins requiring disposal to more than 1,200 tonnes.

At present, coins are destroyed using outdated equipment at the NBU’s Banknote Printing and Minting Works. This machinery, designed primarily to process technical waste from banknote production, has a capacity of only 100–185 kilograms per hour.

"At this rate, destroying the accumulated volume of coins would take more than nine years," the NBU said. "The new equipment will roughly double the processing capacity, allowing the task to be completed in about four years."

The central bank expects that over the next two to three years it will be able to generate up to UAH 153 million in revenue from the sale of scrap metal obtained from the destroyed coins. This figure is several times higher than the purchase price of the equipment, which stands at €252,300, or about UAH 12.6 million.

  • The procurement coincided with a vote in Ukraine’s parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, to rename the country’s smallest coin from a kopeck to a shah. However, the NBU stressed that the two events are unrelated, noting that the purchase of the equipment had been planned back in 2024.