330 jobs go at Ilford Imaging

[Martin Reed]

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.

Not so much the management, they made the best of a bad fist for decades. The blame for the start of the fall can be put down to HM Government for 2 factors;
During WW2 Ilford were forced to put their research into colour technology on hold and concentrate on monochrome materials of use to the war effort (aerial, infra-red etc).
After the war when they had picked up on colour again, (early '60's I think) they had to abandon their colour print system, as the monopolies commission would not condone a process that needed 'back to base' processing, and could not be operated by private labs.

 

[Martin Reed]

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.

Maybe we ought to be talking the situation up a bit more - it's receivership, after all, which is rather different to liquidation. Having heard that chemical manufacturing (ie PQ Universal & Hypam etc) at Mobberley had now gone I feared the worst, but spoke to the Ilford UK head of marketing. Apparently the chemical manufacturing will be outsourced from another supplier, (and there must be a few of those who have spare capacity) and is out to tender at this moment.