Royal Mint resumes penny production after two-year halt

Following a two-year penny production hiatus, Britain’s Royal Mint has reported a mintage of more than 88 million for its 2020 one-penny coin.

It comes after no one-penny coins were minted for general circulation in 2018 and 2019; however, several hundred million pennies were minted each preceding year dating back to 1971, when the United Kingdom adopted decimalization and introduced three denominations, including the penny.

British penny production saw its peak in 2000, when the mint struck more than a billion coins of that denomination.

More recently, throughout the pandemic, U.K. residents hoarded coinage, including pennies, pushing the mint to produce more of those coins for use in day-to-day transactions.

The mint also reported it has struck no new £2 coins for the past four years and no new two-pence coins for the past three years. Officials previously stated the mint had no plans to resume production of these denominations for at least a decade as supplies of both circulation denominations far outpaced demand.

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