We never voluntarily discontinue any product. If it is still listed this means we are trying (hard) to (eventually) bring it back. Things are not easy. Look at the other manufacturers trying to bring back products. Prices are low, demand is low (compared to the volumes for which this industry was once built) and complexity is enourmous. It´s certainly possible to manufacture a quality b/w film but you need so many things to be perfectly working in place that the raw profit derived from selling the final product in small amounts at low prices is not enough to always catch up on all ends in a timely manner. In many cases it is not enough to ever break even. Many competitors of ours have never made a profit yet.
Market consolidation is continuing. You all have observed the final product manufacturers like Agfa, Forte, Fotokemika, Ferrania, Ilford and others go into liquidation and exiting the market. What you have possibly not observed are the consolidations in the background. In the past years we lost many partners making us preproducts like coating for us, making film casettes, boxes, sleeves, backing paper, slitting films, spooling films, mixing powder chemicals, making needed additives and stabilizers and many more.
In the past 24 months these consolidations have been going on faster than ever before. We have to jump in at so many places at once (while the
new building is not yet finished) that unfortunately some products went out of availability while we work on bringing back the missing links.
This is also the case for manufacturing 120 films. We now have to slit them ourselves and we need to have our own backing paper soon. Our slitter was never designed to slit final pancakes. We always had this done elswehere and only used it for the master rolls. It sounds trivial but whoever things this is trivial shall step upfront and try to slit film without flashing it, without scratching it without putting any dust on it while making a clean cut and rewinding it exactly at the needed torque not to tight (pressure fog) and not to loose (falls of the machine) and ofcourse without
any loss because @ current price levels you can´t absorb any losses at all nowhere in the chain.
If we were to speed up the "bringing back" we needed cash to
burn (not to borrow - it will never be seen again) and skilled people. We don´t have either one in excess and thus we moove along at the speed which we can realise out of the cash stream coming from selling non photo-products @ Fotoimpex and with the team of people we can finance like this and who are available.
At present we seek a mechanic/mechatronic but we can only offer part time due to cash limitations. Guess how many job aplications we have received in the past 14 months of searching?
Exactly, zero. If we find one the capability of manufacturing 120 films will be achieved back faster. If not, it takes longer.
How long exactly? As soon as we know we´ll let you know ;-)