330 jobs go at Ilford Imaging

[wiseowl]

330 jobs go at Ilford Imaging

Nearly half the staff at Ilford Imaging lost their jobs yesterday in a move aimed at stemming losses at the troubled photographic materials supplier. Receivers Grant Thornton said the 330 job cuts increased the chances of finding a buyer for the Cheshire-based firm. Redundancies were spread across all departments to trim the workforce to 400.

 

[Sean]

 

[Dave Miller]

And I guess that they are only halfway there at that!

 

[photomc]

Sad news indeed, hopefully the workers were not surpirsed by this..I know we are waiting for 'something' to happen in our own office soon.

Somtimes the waiting is worse than when it really happens.

Let's have good thoughts for the 300 who lost there jobs and for the 400 that are left to do the work that 700 people use to do.

 

[FrankB]

Terrible news for the staff at Ilford. I've only dealt with them personally a few times but on *every* occasion the crew went well out of their way to be as courteous and helpful as possible.

If anyone there reads this forum please know that we're thinking of you and wish you all the very best.

 

[Thomassauerwein]

Hopefully when(If) there is a buyout those human rersouces will be rehired. Ilford is # 1 in my book and I am hoping they come across some good luck.

 

[Black Dog]

Well, I've just bought a big pile of Ilford film anyway, which I went through during just 4 days on Dartmoor. My fingers are crossed!

 

[John McCallum]

Sad news, sorry to hear :-(.

 

[TPPhotog]

If anyone there reads this forum please know that we're thinking of you and wish you all the very best.

I think this sums up how many of us feel. Lets hope Ilford will be back with good news soon and those people who have lost their jobs do get re-employed. If I had the money I'd invest in them without a second thought!

 

[juan]

Well, it's sad news for the employees - I've been laid off in staff reductions too. But it may be good news for Ilford. I don't know any of thier financial data, but generally, being able to reduce costs in part by reducing staff when in an earnings downturn is good for the company in the long run. While all of you socialists (ha!) on this forum may not like it, our having Ilford around does depend on it being a profitable company.
juan

 

[doughowk]

There has been an interesting discussion on Pure-Silver list about how much of the expertize in the making of photo film, paper etc.. is lost in these short-sighted downsizing operations. Ilford may make themselves more attractive for a buyer but only at the loss of technical skills. If this is an example of the invisible hand (& intelligence) of free-market capitalism, think I'll vote socialist ;-)

 

[TPPhotog]

I think that these days in the UK there are very few companies which have too many employee's due to the directors here employing consultants who get over paid for providing strategies that are out dated and failed from the states (no offence to our American friends here, it's just the models were tried out on you first). Another problem with downsizing is as Doug said is the loss of technical experience and it's very possible that many Ilford employees kicked in the teeth will not want their old jobs back.

 

[juan]

I worked in broadcasting for many years, and I don't think there's any business more infested with insulatants - as we came to call them. BTW, consultants in this case means someone who examines a company and gives advice as to how it should be run - the word has come to mean something entirely different in the computer and some other fields. Their ideas are failures when tried here in the U.S., too Tony, so no offence taken at all. All too often the strategies seem to come from the need to do something to prove their worth as consultants rather that to help the client company. My best ratings success came at stations too cheap to hire consultants - they actually relied on my judgement and the judgement of the other employees. Why how could they do such a thing?
juan

 

[marcello.brussard]

Ilford B&W product are excellent, their RC paper is without any doubt
the best on the market, FB paper are very good, delta 100 is on many aspect better than T-MAX, FP4 and HP5 both stands shoulder to shoulder with plus-x and tri-x. The prices of their products are convenient or at least comparable with those of their competitors.

The B&W is a niche market since the appearance of the one hour color labs and I do not really think digital has affected it too much.
I do not even think that their adventure on colour film is the cause of their
financial problem. Ilford colour film were so close to agfa to let me belive they actually where agfa rebranded and rebranding is not so expensive.

The same might not be said for the inkjet and pc paper branch: their market might be increasing, but I will not be surprised to know that the revenues are not so high, competition is fierce and ilford product are probably used only by people attracted by the well known photographic brand.

Is highly probable that the breakdown of Ilford has its origin in years of bad management and bad financial administration.

Once again the workers have paid the ultimate cost.

 

[eclarke]

Hi all,
My brother in law is intimate with the film coating process and knows the Ilford operation very well. Ilford's capacity is 350 million square yards per year!! It will take a lot of amateur enthusiasts to take up the slack. As was stated above, much coating knowledge will be losta s a result of losing employees. Despite being large sophisticated machines, the coating machines really require a touch which must be learned..Evan Clarke

 

[jade]

Employee victimized?

Once again the workers have paid the ultimate cost.

My theory is that almost all company failures are due to either bad management or unfair competition, and rarely due to employees. Exceptions include big unions that fight the management all the time like the teamsters in the US.

This is because employees can be purchased, trained or fired at management's discretion. Sounds harsh, doesn't it, but that's how management views them. They are expendable, and there's an inexaustible supply of them. They are parts of a machine. It's the management who runs the machine that makes the most difference. For these people, a company is like a project or adventure. They fail at one, (hopefully) learn something and move on to another. Whether it's a film company, a donut factory or an advertising agency, doesn't make much difference. Such is the cruel world for the so called "employees".

The consumer is an abstract concept. The only thing concrete about him is that he complains a lot. They are otherwise not in the equation at all. It's the "market" that is the big deal, a market to which the company sells. If you think consumers are the same as "market", then you are wrong. Consumers strategically misled at any given time by creative advertisements of a specific product makes a "market" in that time window for that product.

Therefore a company is an investment (to buy equipment, employees, etc), a management (to run the company) and a market (to which the company sells.) So you see it's all about finance and marketing, and a gang of juvenile delinquents having fun playing the game. The people (employees and consumers) are not in it at all.

You or I, the employees or the consumers can cry and curse all you want. Doesn't make a damn bit of difference. If you want to make a difference in any thing, then become a financier, an executive or a marketeer. Do not become an employee. He is nobody.

 

[TPPhotog]

I wonder if any company that has used consultants has been successful in the long term. From experience their advice always seems to be reduce the size of the workforce; outsource specialist skills to companies / people who do not care about the original business as it is only one of many "clients"; then sell the company to the highest bidder; who then asset strips the company and uses it's name if they bother using it at all simply as a brand name.

 

[voceumana]

In defense of consultants, most consultants delivery what is asked of them. If the goal is to make the bottom line look better for a possible sale, that is what is delivered.

Omron, back in the mid 1980's, hired a consulting firm to help them "globalise" the company, and it resulted in a better focused strategy, new products, more hiring, etc.

Consultants certainly don't have any magic.

Charlie Strack,
who is not a consultant!

 

[TPPhotog]

Thanks Charlie at least that is one successful result Sounds like we're back to the financiers, executives and marketeers, either way a lot of innocent hard working people have lost their livelihood as usual through no fault of their own For us worrying about losing our supplies it's going to be a lot easier as we have alternatives but they don't!

 

[jack]

Is highly probable that the breakdown of Ilford has its origin in years of bad management and bad financial administration.

Once again the workers have paid the ultimate cost.

I (and I expect, a lot of the employees, both past and present) could not agree with you more!
We are still completely shell shocked by what has happened. We had no warning that this was coming. The receivers arrived on the Monday and by Friday half the workforce was gone. Also, the fact that the receivers have been brought in means that redundancy payouts are paid by the government not the company - i.e. a whole lot less than the workers deserved!

We are now for sale in the Financial Times...... so if anyone has a few million to spare, please come and buy us!

Thanks for all your kind words throughout the forum - we appreciate them!

 

[Thomassauerwein]

Is highly probable that the breakdown of Ilford has its origin in years of bad management and bad financial administration.

Once again the workers have paid the ultimate cost.

I (and I expect, a lot of the employees, both past and present) could not agree with you more!
We are still completely shell shocked by what has happened. We had no warning that this was coming. The receivers arrived on the Monday and by Friday half the workforce was gone. Also, the fact that the receivers have been brought in means that redundancy payouts are paid by the government not the company - i.e. a whole lot less than the workers deserved!

We are now for sale in the Financial Times...... so if anyone has a few million to spare, please come and buy us!

Thanks for all your kind words throughout the forum - we appreciate them!

Just the person I've been looking for! Just between you and I can you go in and grab me a whole bunch of film and fb paper? Don't over do it as to not attract attention but a little every day would be nice. There is a case of 2 buck chuck from Trador Joes in it for ya. By the way, this is a secret.

 

[jack]

..................more than my job's worth mate, sorry !!

 

[doughowk]

From another site, found the following info:

The word on the street is that they will continue to make films and paper out of the Mobberly plant, near Manchester, as long as it makes financial sense. About 300 people have gotten the pink slip last week, but the skeleton crew to operate manufacturing is still there, research got the ax.

If there is such a thing as an intelligent buyer for a photo paper company, may they recognize the importance of knowledge/experience & quickly re-hire former employees.

 

[Tom Westbrook]

There has been an interesting discussion on Pure-Silver list about how much of the expertize in the making of photo film, paper etc.. is lost in these short-sighted downsizing operations. Ilford may make themselves more attractive for a buyer but only at the loss of technical skills. If this is an example of the invisible hand (& intelligence) of free-market capitalism, think I'll vote socialist ;-)

This is kind of long, but hunorous nonetheless...

A cowboy was herding his herd in a remote pasture when suddenly a brand-new BMW advanced out of a dust cloud towards him.

The driver, a young man in a Brioni suit, Gucci shoes, Ray Ban sunglasses and YSL tie, leans out the window and asks the cowboy, "If I tell you exactly how many cows and calves you have in your herd, will you give me a calf?"

The cowboy looks at the man, obviously a yuppie, then looks at his peacefully grazing herd and calmly answers, "Sure. Why not?" The yuppie parks his car, whips out his Dell notebook computer, connects it to his AT&T cell phone, surfs to a NASA page on the Internet, where he calls up a GPS satellite navigation system to get an exact fix on his location which he then feeds to another NASA satellite that scans the area in an ultra-high-resolution photo. The young man then opens the digital photo in Adobe Photoshop and exports it to an image processing facility in Hamburg, Germany.

Within seconds, he receives an email on his Palm Pilot that the image has been processed and the data stored. He then accesses a MS- SQL database through an ODBC connected Excel spreadsheet with hundreds of complex formulas. He uploads all of this data via an email on his Blackberry and, after a few minutes, receives a response.

Finally, he prints out a full-color, 150- page report on his hi-tech, miniaturized HP LaserJet printer and finally turns to the cowboy and says, "You have exactly 1586 cows and calves."

"That's right. Well, I guess you can take one of my calves," says the cowboy.

He watches the young man select one of the animals and looks on amused as the young man stuffs it into the trunk of his car.

Then the cowboy says to the young man, "Hey, if I can tell you exactly what your business is, will you give me back my calf?"

The young man thinks about it for a second and then says, "Okay, why not?"

"You're a consultant." says the cowboy.

"Wow! That's correct," says the yuppie, "but how did you guess that?"

"No guessing required." answered the cowboy. "You showed up here even though nobody called you; you want to get paid for an answer I already knew, to a question I never asked; and you don't know anything about my business...

Now give me back my dog."​

 

[sparx]