Johannesburg - The SA National Reserve Bank has outsourced the printing of R8bn worth of R100 notes to a Swedish company, the Sunday Times reported.
This followed a discovery in May last year of a missing security feature in the R100 notes printed by The SA Bank Note Company (SABN).
The missing security feature had resulted from faults with a few of SABN machines.
Insiders told the Sunday Times that the decision to print at the Swedish company, Crane AB, was taken even though the machines had been fixed.
Workers at SABN had been idle and could possibly lose their jobs.
"People come in, sit there, go to their lunch and then go home. we don't even know when production will resume. It seems like the bosses are running away from the problem," one of the workers told the newspaper.
The SABN currently employs more than 500 workers.
Reserve Bank spokesperson Hlengani Mathebula refused to comment on the outsourcing.
"It is not standard practice for central banks to disclose where, how and by whom... currencies (are) produced," he told the newspaper.