De La Rue De La Rue De La Rue plc (, ) is a British banknote manufacturing, security printing of passports and tax stamps, brand authentication and paper-making company with headquarters in Basingstoke, Hampshire, England. It also has a factory on the Team Valley Trading Estate, Gateshead, and other facilities at Loughton, Essex, and Bathford, Somerset. There are overseas offices in Kenya, Sri Lanka and Malta. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange. The company was founded by Thomas de la Rue (1793–1866), who moved from Guernsey to London in 1821 and set up in business as a 'Leghorn' straw hat maker,
Hippolyte De La Rue Italian Silver Medal of Military Valor. De La Rue was posted to Alexandria, Egypt, in January 1919 to command No. 270 (Seaplane) Squadron. Offered a permanent commission in the RAF that August, he nevertheless returned to Australia and sought employment through Lieutenant Colonel Stanley Goble, an ex-RNAS pilot then seconded to the Navy Office. Goble, desiring a specialist seaplane pilot for naval cooperation work, arranged a captain's commission in the recently established Australian Air Corps, successor to the wartime Australian Flying Corps. On 17 June 1920, in an Airco DH.9A, De La Rue accompanied Captain Adrian Cole on a flight