Where do our key blanks come from?

Every key-cutter needs key blanks onto which to cut. Aside from a few quite bog-standard ones, most key blanks are quite specialist pieces of kit and get made in only a few locations in the world. It’s an interesting and in part amusing part of the trade.

Most blanks are made in Italy or Spain…

In the UK, there are three brands that are most common among key blanks. The chances are that at least one of your house keys has one of these brand names written on. First of all, there’s Silca, an Italian manufacturer of blanks, key machines etc.; then there’s JMA, a Spanish manufacturer who also make key-cutting machinery; lastly, there’s HD (Davenport Burgess), a British manufacturer.

Silca is the biggest of all, with the largest variety of different blanks. They also make a lot of key blanks for OEMs, e.g. for car keys. So, even if your key doesn’t have Silca written on, it might have been made by them.

JMA is home to, in my opinion, the world’s worst slogan: “Globally unlocking millions of doors daily”. Talk about a mouthful! Still, their blanks and stockists are very good, and very technically savvy.

HD is a proudly British brand which is stocked, among many others, by most of the high street key-cutting chains. Most of their blanks are made of brass, which has its pros and cons. (JMA and Silca use primarily steel.)

…which can lead to some amusing names

Aside from Davenport Burgess and a small selection of others, most lock brands are neither British, nor made in Britain. As such, what’s written on the blanks can sometimes be amusing to English readers, even though they’re not funny in the original language.

Silca labels all its ASSA keys with the prefix ASS, e.g. ASS 55R. ASSA, a Swedish brand, itself has a series of blanks in the UK with F41L written on, which looks like FAIL.

Then there’s Ruko, a Danish brand, whose Silca references start with RU. RU19 sounds like something you might ask a kid trying to buy alcohol…

The fairly commonplace UL053 looks sort of like U LOSE, which ain’t good.

But English isn’t the only language where cross-border humour happens. The German firm ABUS (which stands for August Bremicker und Söhne) is a well respected firm, but “abus” in French means “abuse”. That’s less good for brand image!