Faulty Batches

"This time," said the Treasury Minister, "I ditched those dodgy Europeans, and I have assigned the manufacture of our gold coins to five American companies. Look, they are all shining and beautiful, and they are all exactly the same!"

The secretary looked at the coins, weighed some of them, and cleared his throat. "Ahem, Sir. I would like to point out that here we have at least three different kinds of coin; they all look the same, but their weight is different. Would you please come close to the scale? This coin weights 10 grams, as it should, but this other one is 11 grams, while this one is only 9 grams. Obviously two of our manufacturing companies haven't done a good job."

Sad as he could have been, for having been tricked agin by other dodgy companies, the Minister managed to raise his head. "Well.. it's just a matter of finding the fauly ones using the trick that you've showed me, by using the scale only once..."

"Sir. Actually, this is a different problem altogether, we need to find two sources of errors, rather than just one. One batch is heavier, another is lighter. The method I used before will not be sufficient this time. But we can nevertheless find the two offending batches by using the scale once."

How did they manage to use the scale only once?

Solution

Notes:

• You may assume that each batch is made of a large amount of coins (thousands, millions, up to you! :)
• All coins of the same batch weight the same amount.
• The storyline in this puzzle follows from the story in Faulty Batch. It is however NOT necessary to have previously read/solved that puzzle in order to solve this one, even though it may be preferable.