Dec 22, 2005. /Lesprom Network/. A British firm with a long history of printing Kenya's money will continue doing so after its bid beat out two other companies. De La Rue Currency earned the highest mark in the technical bid stage and asked for the least amount of money in Kenya's first competitive search for bank note printers since the country gained independence from Britain in 1963, the Central Bank of Kenya said in a statement this week. The British firm - if there is no challenge to the process - is expected to deliver the first new bank notes by January 2007. Currently, Kenya uses about 38.4 million bank notes monthly, according to Central Bank statistics. De La Rue Currency offered a bid of $51.2 million to fulfill the three-year contract, which included new designs for the currency. Germany's Giesecke and Devrient, which was the only other firm to fulfill all the initial bid requirements, made an offer of 76.3 million. French firm, Francois Charles Oberthur Fiduciare, failed to meet the initial bid requirements. Kenya's currency was printed by Britain's Bradbury and Wilkinson from 1966-1986 before it was acquired by De La Rue. In 1991, the Central Bank made De La Rue its exclusive supplier for currency printing after it agreed to open a printing factory in the country, which it did in 1994. But president Mwai Kibaki, elected on an anti-corruption platform in 2002 - terminated that deal and put the currency printing to its first public bid.