The production of a high security South African passport started on Wednesday, the CEO of the Government Printing Works said.

"The new passport contains several high security features that are tamper-proof, making it impossible to forge," Tom Moyane told a media briefing in Pretoria.

He said the passport holder's biographical data is a letter engraved on a polycarbonate page in the new passport.

The passport has a fine-line security background design depicting the so-called "Big Five" animals on the pages.

He said it took the Government Printing Works four years to research the new passport and they were confident it could not be forged.

He said government had invested half-a-billion rands in the production of the new passport.

Home Affairs spokesperson Siobhan McCarthy said the existing South African passport would remain valid until its expiry date or until it ran out of pages.

She said the new passport would be issued to applicants who had recently applied for passports.