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SCMP Reporter

HALF of Hong Kong's coin-operated telephones will reject the newly minted $1 coin when it is released next month.

  New $1, 50 cent and 20 cent coins will also be unacceptable to a third of all drinks vending machines.

  The coins, which replace the Queen's portrait with a Bauhinia, will be issued on October 11, the Government Treasury announced yesterday.

  But this will be too early for Hongkong Telecom and Swire Bottlers, which distribute 50,000 vending machines, to amend their machinery.

  The new coins are similar in design to the $2 and $5 coins issued earlier this year. They are the same size, thickness and weight as their predecessors, but their metal content is different.

  This new metal composition cannot be recognised by some electric sensors used in drinks machines, pay phones, ferry turnstiles and MTR ticket machines.

  The $1 coin will still be nickel-plated steel, but the metals will be in different proportions. The same will be true for the brass-plated steel 50 cent coins and the nickel and brass 20 cent coins.

  The difference in composition is to allow the Treasury to use automatic coin separators to slowly take the old coins out of use.

  The MTR will have to replace the mechanisms in 500 ticket-issuing machines within the next few weeks to accommodate the new coins.

  ''Unless there's a problem with the supplier we should be ready in time,'' an MTR spokesperson said yesterday.

  But Telecom will only be halfway through updating its coin-operated phones.

   There are more than 3,000 pay phones in Hong Kong, and they have to be sent to their suppliers - in Singapore and Europe - to be updated to take both old and new coins.

 ''We expect to be finished by the end of the year,'' a Telecom spokesman said.

  Swire Bottlers, Hong Kong's major drinks vending machine distributor, began amending its machines in April. Most of those in busy areas are now able to accept old and new coins, but there are still about 17,000 machines which will reject them.

      Hong Kong Ferry and the Light Rail Transit said they would be ready for the new coins.

  A government spokesman said yesterday that companies which use coin-operated machines were supplied with examples of the new coins a few months ago.

  ''We are still waiting to find out the results, but we haven't been told about any problems yet,'' he said.

  ''So far as we can say, everything should be okay.''   The old coins will be sent to the Royal Mint to be melted down from October, he said.



New Bauhinia coin leaves phones behind