Unavailability of Fuji E6 chemical kits?

[MattKing]

Would anyone object to my changing the thread title to: "Disappearance of the Fuji E6 chemical kits?"
Death always implies "expiry" to me.

 

[Henning Serger]

Would anyone object to my changing the thread title to: "Disappearance of the Fuji E6 chemical kits?"
Death always implies "expiry" to me.

No, because as I've written in my post above, there is the chance that next year Fuji Hunt E6 chemistry will be available in kits again.
I cannot go into further details because of NDAs at the moment.
Please be patient and don't panic.

Best regards,
Henning

 

[nbagno]

Do it

 

[MattKing]

No, because as I've written in my post above, there is the chance that next year Fuji Hunt E6 chemistry will be available in kits again.
I cannot go into further details because of NDAs at the moment.
Please be patient and don't panic.

Best regards,
Henning

Then I could change the title again - to add "Temporary".
I was aiming the potential change at the confusion that results from the fact that people refer to chemicals "dying" when they have lost capacity due to age or contamination.

 

[AgX]

When I chatted with Freestyle, they were looking at alternatives to the Fuji-Hunt Kit. Either Freestyle mentioned it, or I read somewhere else that they were looking at Bellini as a potential replacement of the Fuji-Hunt Kit.

Bellini themselves listed them amongst their retailers.

 

[Scott J.]

Anyone heard any additional news on this from retailers/suppliers in the last couple months? Henning's comments are intriguing... Hopefully something comes to fruition.

 

[nbagno]

Anyone heard any additional news on this from retailers/suppliers in the last couple months? Henning's comments are intriguing... Hopefully something comes to fruition.

Freestyle is hoping to have Bellini E6 chemicals by late spring...

 

[mshchem]

Freestyle is hoping to have Bellini E6 chemicals by late spring...

This looks great. I've never tried anything from these folks, looks like Bellini has everything!

 

[Henning Serger]

Anyone heard any additional news on this from retailers/suppliers in the last couple months? Henning's comments are intriguing... Hopefully something comes to fruition.

Please just be patient. Behind the scenes the people in the industry are working......Things cannot happen overnight in this very difficult pandemic situation.

Best regards,
Henning

 

[mshchem]

Meanwhile, in the USA, the bulk chemistry remains available. Requires purchasing large amounts. Unique Photo in New Jersey.

 

[haliderollei]

Please just be patient. Behind the scenes the people in the industry are working......Things cannot happen overnight in this very difficult pandemic situation.

Best regards,
Henning

You are talking about Fuji here...

 

[Scott J.]

Bumping this thread to see if anyone has heard any news on the status of these kits. I did notice that Fuji recently changed the package sizes and catalog numbers of their Pro6 chemicals (the mini lab-sized quantities of their E-6 chemistry), so I’m wondering if that might be an indication that other film chemistry-related changes are on the horizon for them.

 

[AgX]

In Europe Fuji still have their product listing from 2014 online, listing the 5L E-6 kit.

But a dealer typically listing various Fuji kits, now not even lists the 5L C-41 kit anymore.

 

[kyuseok]

Looks like it's gone for good
Maybe Jobo #9220 kit, which is made in Japan, could be a Fuji-made proper small litre kit?

 

[koraks]

Thread title changed to make it more accurate.

 

[Scott J.]

Looks like it's gone for good
Maybe Jobo #9220 kit, which is made in Japan, could be a Fuji-made proper small litre kit?

Is this based on something specific that you saw or is it just inference based on the lack of news? (Probably a reasonable conclusion at this point.)

I wrote to Fuji a couple months ago asking if there was an update on the availability of the 5-liter kits and never received a response. As a company, they’re a black box and the analog portion of the company seems kind of in disarray right now. My hope has been that as the supply chain problems gradually got sorted out the kits would become available again, but I have a new hypothesis…

I think the Jobo kits are, in fact, made by Fuji (I can’t imagine there’s another Japanese company making E-6 chemistry). It may be that Fuji felt it wasn’t selling enough of the 5-liter kits to justify the packaging and shipping costs and opted to broker a deal with Jobo. Fuji still makes the Pro6 chemicals (the proper name for their E-6 chemistry line), so it’s not like they don’t have the product available. The Jobo kits are available in (I believe) 1-liter and 2.5-liter sizes, so perhaps Fuji feels they can sell more in those sizes, through a partner, than they could of the 5-liter kits (of course, this begs the question why Fuji didn’t just release its own smaller kits).

Whatever the case may be, the Jobo kits are, as far as I can tell, currently only available in Europe. I asked Omer at CatLabs about this and he said they’re working diligently to find a way of getting the kits here in the U.S. He said he expects to have them available “soon,” but couldn’t specify when (there’s probably a lot they don’t have control over, e.g., import regulations).

I tried the Bellini E-6 chemicals and while they do develop film, I found I had a hard time getting a control strip that was within aims. The shelf life of their chemicals was also disappointing (control strips drifted quite a bit after the chemicals sat in partially filled bottles for two weeks). I’ve seen much better performance and shelf life from the Fuji chemicals, so I’m hoping the Jobo versions turn out to be equivalent replacements.

 

[koraks]

the analog portion of the company

For clarity: FUJIFILM has no 'analog' part. They're not organized along analog/digital lines.

For photo chemistry, the logical point of contact would be Fuji Hunt in Sint Niklaas, Belgium. I don't know if there are any plans there to continue/revive small consumer kits. When asked a similar question about RA4 chemistry, the very clear answer was that they're not planning for any small consumer quantity package sizes.

Like you said, it's conceivable that they might partner up with an external party for tiny volume offerings, although personally I think it's more sensible for parties like Jobo to do business with e.g. Adox, Bellini, etc.

 

[DREW WILEY]

I just stumbled onto this old thread. Freestyle currently has E6 kits in stock. Shoudn't make a bit of difference that these carry their own Arista brand label.