Arista EDU ULTRA 100 Made in Canada?

[MattKing]

While we here may care most about where and by whom the master rolls of film are coated, the labelling and marketing and distribution issues are much more closely related to where those master rolls are turned into something that can actually be put up for retail sale for eventual loading into a camera.
Most of the retail cost of photographic film arises after the master roll stage.
Historically, the industry was more vertically integrated than it is now.

 

[kiemchacsu]

it's funny that we've discussed such a long converstation without knowing how'a the film looked actually, OP please share

 

[MCB18]

Skimming the thread, and reading the guidelines for something labeled as “made in Canada” in Post #18, I can def see the confusion.

The film is Foma, made In Czech Republic.

The Cartridges are made in China. No, Flic Film doesn’t make them, you can buy them in bulk from Reflx for like $0.6/pc. Probably cheaper if you order something like 10k from Alibaba like Flic Film would.

The film is packed by Flic Film in Canada. According to the guidelines above, it is technically OK to say ”made in Canada”, so long as 51% of what the end customer pays goes to the Canadian company… that seems extremely misleading, though, since none of the product itself is actually made in Canada.

 

[Dali]

MCB18, this exactly my feeling: Misleading.

 

[MattKing]

Skimming the thread, and reading the guidelines for something labeled as “made in Canada” in Post #18, I can def see the confusion.

The film is Foma, made In Czech Republic.

The Cartridges are made in China. No, Flic Film doesn’t make them, you can buy them in bulk from Reflx for like $0.6/pc. Probably cheaper if you order something like 10k from Alibaba like Flic Film would.

The film is packed by Flic Film in Canada. According to the guidelines above, it is technically OK to say ”made in Canada”, so long as 51% of what the end customer pays goes to the Canadian company… that seems extremely misleading, though, since none of the product itself is actually made in Canada.

The "made in" words don't really accurately reference the source locations of the component parts of things that are assembled.
That is why we are seeing a fair amount of labelling now which says something like "made in Canada from components sourced in Canada and internationally".
At the risk of wandering into politics - don't go there! - where would you say cars are made when parts for them come from sources from all around the world, and where many of the sub-assemblies are assembled in Canada, but final assembly takes place in Detroit?

 

[TomR55]

Hi there,

Sorry if the question has already been posted but I just received cartridges of 35mm Arista EDU ULTRA 100 film and it is written "Made in Canada" on the tag. There is no box, so there is no notice and no development times... Pretty basic, so I have a couple of questions for you:

1) As Freestyle is not a film manufacturer, who did it in Canada?
2) Do you have some guidance to share on development time with D76 1+1?

Thanks a bunch!

If this film is indeed Arista Ultra 100, I believe the MDC gives a development time of 10 minutes, D76 1 + 1 at 20 C.

 

[gordrob]

The Cartridges are made in China. No, Flic Film doesn’t make them, you can buy them in bulk from Reflx for like $0.6/pc. Probably cheaper if you order something like 10k from Alibaba like Flic Film would.

The cartridges are made in Canada that is why they bear the label Made in Canada. Check the Youtube video in post #14 - the approximately 1:30 mark of the video explains that they are Made in Canada, Flic doesn't order them from China.

 

[MCB18]

The cartridges are made in Canada that is why they bear the label Made in Canada. Check the Youtube video in post #14 - the approximately 1:30 mark of the video explains that they are Made in Canada, Flic doesn't order them from China.

Well, if they do, cudos to them, but it’s not an original design and you can get them way cheaper from China, as mentioned up thread. This would not be the first time a company has lied about their capabilities…

 

[GregY]

Well, if they do, cudos to them, but it’s not an original design and you can get them way cheaper from China, as mentioned up thread.

Well, if they do, cudos to them, but it’s not an original design and you can get them way cheaper from China, as mentioned up thread. This would not be the first time a company has lied about their capabilities…

You're out on a limb there, casting aspersions. I know Dave and have done business with him at his store in Longview on a number of occasions.....

 

[MattKing]

You're out on a limb there, casting aspersions.

+1
Flic Film are very active in the Canadian market as suppliers and manufacturers and distributors
They may very well be manufacturing cassettes based on a sourced design.
Here is their website: https://flicfilm.ca/

 

[Craig]

This would not be the first time a company has lied about their capabilities…

Or more likely they are being copied in China.

 

[MCB18]

+1
Flic Film are very active in the Canadian market as suppliers and manufacturers and distributors
They may very well be manufacturing cassettes based on a sourced design.
Here is their website: https://flicfilm.ca/

Well regardless, from Canada or China, they’re pretty terrible. I do not use them as bulk cassettes because they’re impossible to open without destroying the cassette (even with the tool from what others tell me), and the one time I did use one (on Arista.EDU, actually) my film got scratched to hell by the felt. Apparently Foma also used them for a run, maybe as an experiment, idk, and the quality of the product fell dramatically.

Good for them for being self sufficient I guess, but my god the cassettes do suck…

 

[Agulliver]

I'd still like to see photos of the actual cassettes and packaging. But am certainly prepared to believe that the cassettes are manufactured in Canada by Flic.

 

[mehguy]

+1
Flic Film are very active in the Canadian market as suppliers and manufacturers and distributors
They may very well be manufacturing cassettes based on a sourced design.
Here is their website: https://flicfilm.ca/

I'm sorry to bump an old thread, but I believe the cassettes that they are using are from a Chinese distributor. You can find the same cassettes that Flic Film uses on Alibaba (chinese wholesaler website)

https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/35mm-Film-Cassette-Production-of-Film_1600971015044.html?spm=a2700.details.you_may_like.4.570d301baQE01e

These have the exact same design as the flic film ones and have the same latching mechanism to keep the film cassette closed, so it is highly likely that they are getting them from a similar source.

 

[loccdor]

Considering it's a very simple thing to design and there are only a few ways to make it, isn't it plausible that both Canada and China could be producing the cassette?

 

[MCB18]

Considering it's a very simple thing to design and there are only a few ways to make it, isn't it plausible that both Canada and China could be producing the cassette?

Occam’s razor applies here. It’s much more likely that it’s from a single source rather than Flic buying tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of injection moulding equipment just to make a part that already exists and costs pennies to import.

 

[mehguy]

Occam’s razor holds here. It’s much more likely that it’s from a single source rather than Flic buying tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of injection moulding equipment just to make a part that already exists and costs pennies to import.

This is my thought-process as well. Considering the cost to manufacture vs the cost of just ordering them from a 3rd party, it doesn't make sense to do the former.

You can also find the same cassette in other listings from chinese companies selling repackaged vision 3 film:

 

[loccdor]

They wouldn't need to buy the equipment - they would contract with another company already making plastics. I think that's what the Flic Film owner said he did in the video I watched a while back. He mentioned that because Alberta already has an oil industry, such local manufacturing exists.

 

[pentaxuser]

The cartridges are made in Canada that is why they bear the label Made in Canada.

Well bear or bears ( there are more than one of them) does have a bearing(pun intended).

I have had an early warning that Andrew O'Neill's next video features the bears( his neighbours) whom he knows well, making the cassettes in his shed So it's "Made in Canada" by an exclusively native Canadian workforce

Now if that doesn't justify "Made in Canada" then I don't know what does

pentaxuser

 

[MCB18]

Well bear or bears ( there are more than one of them) does have a bearing(pun intended).

I have had an early warning that Andrew O'Neill's next video features the bears( his neighbours) whom he knows well, making the cassettes in his shed So it's "Made in Canada" by an exclusively native Canadian workforce

Now if that doesn't justify "Made in Canada" then I don't know what does

pentaxuser

Hahaha this got me

 

[mshchem]

They wouldn't need to buy the equipment - they would contract with another company already making plastics. I think that's what the Flic Film owner said he did in the video I watched a while back. He mentioned that because Alberta already has an oil industry, such local manufacturing exists.

Cost of tooling is a barrier. Almost every injection molding tool used over here is made in China. Probably running 24/7 over in Hong Kong

I'll never forget when I was a kid we toured Kodak Park in Rochester. Looking out over the sea of injection molding machines making Instamatic cartridges, and parts for cameras. Holy Moly that was amazing.

I bought some of these Flic 35mm cartridges, a bit of a steep learning curve but they work, I bought the little tool Flic sells to open. Promptly broke it, I think there's later revisions (Rev 37 )

 

[MCB18]

Cost of tooling is a barrier. Almost every injection molding tool used over here is made in China. Probably running 24/7 over in Hong Kong

Yeah, tooling is expensive. I looked at doing something similar to what @loccdor described above, and to get a simple part made, the “AA” type film core, 25mm dia x 35mm tall, with no complex features or overhanging parts, which is done with a 2 part mold, would have cost me $4-5k to have the mould made if I bought it outright, and something like $6-8k if I used a sort of “rent-to-buy contract some places offer, where you are paying off the tooling while ordering some contractually defined order for 6-8 months (was like 10,000 pcs/month or something).

I’m sure that the cost for the cassette would be much higher considering the complexity. I just can’t see a smaller company like Flic being able to justify the costs to start injection moulding.

I don’t particularly care for Flic, they’ve been pretty opaque about a lot of things and have actually been caught stealing designs from others, so I’m admittedly being very clinical. Though from my perspective it seems like they are extremely opposed to the idea of admitting that anything but the film comes from outside of Canada, even though in some cases it’s pretty obvious that they are repackaging stuff they import, because of reasons that are probably best not brought into this conversation.

It would be extremely easy for them to dispel any doubt by showing us their manufacturing processes, but they have made it very clear in the past that they don’t intend to do that, possibly because they don’t want to share the cassettes and machine, which almost certainly come from China,

 

[mshchem]

Yeah, tooling is expensive. I looked at doing something similar to what @loccdor described above, and to get a simple part made, the “AA” type film core, 25mm dia x 35mm tall, with no complex features or overhanging parts, which is done with a 2 part mold, would have cost me $4-5k to have the mould made if I bought it outright, and something like $6-8k if I used a sort of “rent-to-buy contract some places offer, where you are paying off the tooling while ordering some contractually defined order for 6-8 months (was like 10,000 pcs/month or something).

I’m sure that the cost for the cassette would be much higher considering the complexity. I just can’t see a smaller company like Flic being able to justify the costs to start injection moulding.

I don’t particularly care for Flic, they’ve been pretty opaque about a lot of things and have actually been caught stealing designs from others, so I’m admittedly being very clinical. Though from my perspective it seems like they are extremely opposed to the idea of admitting that anything but the film comes from outside of Canada, even though in some cases it’s pretty obvious that they are repackaging stuff they import, because of reasons that are probably best not brought into this conversation.

It would be extremely easy for them to dispel any doubt by showing us their manufacturing processes, but they have made it very clear in the past that they don’t intend to do that, possibly because they don’t want to share the cassettes and machine, which almost certainly come from China,

Yeah, I get the same vibe.

 

[mehguy]

I don’t particularly care for Flic, they’ve been pretty opaque about a lot of things and have actually been caught stealing designs from others, so I’m admittedly being very clinical. Though from my perspective it seems like they are extremely opposed to the idea of admitting that anything but the film comes from outside of Canada, even though in some cases it’s pretty obvious that they are repackaging stuff they import, because of reasons that are probably best not brought into this conversation.

The quality of their products also leaves much to be desired. The bottles they use to ship their fixer and Photo-Flo clone in are not good quality at all. I ended up breaking the caps on one due to screwing it on tight not long after I bought the bottle. I've never had that happen with any other bottle, let alone a bottle that is used to store photo chemistry in. I naturally like to screw them on tight. Also the resolution they use to print the labels at are not very high, making the fine text very difficult to read.

This combined with the miserable-feeling plastic cassettes they use doesn't leave a very good impression.

 

[gordrob]

It would be extremely easy for them to dispel any doubt by showing us their manufacturing processes, but they have made it very clear in the past that they don’t intend to do that, possibly because they don’t want to share the cassettes and machine, which almost certainly come from China,

From what I have been told by someone that sells Flic cassettes is that they are manufactured here in Alberta. Maybe China has copied the cassette design. I don't know why you seem to figure that the cassettes cannot be manufactured here in Canada. Injection molding has been a big part of the auto industry in Canada since it started .