Eastman Kodak and film availability

[PHOTOTONE]

A few years ago, maybe even a decade or so, I believe Kodak built a new film coating plant. Over time, it was my understanding that Kodak migrated the coating of most film stocks to this plant. Hence the subtle difference in "new" TRI-X over the older one.

Does this "new" coating plant help Kodak to achieve efficiencies in manufacture to enable it to continue to make film products profitably in a contracting market?

Does Kodak only have one coating plant?

 

[Photo Engineer]

Kodak has 2 plants in the US, in Rochester and in Colorado. It has plants in England and France as well. The plant in England is ramping down in production. Plants in Mexico, Brazil, Canada and Australia are almost closed or are closed.

The new coating facility can coat film and paper both, but previous facilities had different machines for each product, film or paper.

PE

 

[Mick Fagan]

The Australian plant in Melbourne is closed, it will possibly become a new housing estate.

Mick.

 

[Ted Harris]

According to Kodak in a recent conversation, there are no plans to make any changes in production at the European plant.

 

[Alex Bishop-Thorpe]

The Melbourne plant closing was big news a few years ago, because of the number of jobs lost and how it seemed to "herald in" the new digital age, I remember the reports quite clearly for some reason. Interesting though, I often wonder if there are any coating operations in Australia at all.

 

[Lopaka]

I remember some releases by Kodak a couple of years ago when migrating all film production to the new coating plants that all films would be the newer 'thin' emulsion - more efficient coating. Therefore changes in development times were published for some films.

Bob