Wales so closed in 1908; since then, although banks in Scotland and Northern Ireland continue to have the right to issue banknotes in their own countries, the Bank of England has a monopoly on the issue of banknotes in Wales. The Commercial Bank of Wales, established in Cardiff by Sir Julian Hodge in 1971, was taken over by the Bank of Scotland in 1988 and absorbed into its parent company in 2002. The Royal Mint, who issue the coinage circulated through the whole of the UK, have been based at a single site in Llantrisant since 1980. Since decimalisation, in 1971,
Royal Canadian Mint steel technology except for the $1 and $2 circulation coins, which started using this technology as of April 10, 2012. Many foreign countries have had coinage struck at the Royal Canadian Mint, including circulation coins, numismatic coins, and ready-to-strike blanks. In 1970, Master of the Mint, Gordon Ward Hunter, relaunched the Foreign Circulation division. A contract for Singapore was won in January 1970, to produce six million rimmed blanks in a copper-nickel alloy. This was their first export contract since a contract for the Dominican Republic 32 years earlier. The second contract came in April 1970 with the Central Bank