Fotospeed papers - manufacturer?

pdeeh · Nov 7, 2013

I have a couple of boxes of Fotospeed VCRC paper that I acquired as part of a job lot, and spent a few hours printing with it yesterday. I rather liked the tones and the way it handled,

Fotospeed are a UK manufacturer/distributor of darkroom & inkjet printing products, but as far as I know they don't make their own papers; the boxes aren't marked with a country or region of origin, and I wondered if anyone knew who makes their enlarging paper for them?

Not that it particularly matters, but I'm inquisitive by nature

R.Gould · Nov 7, 2013

Fotospeed papers are currently made by Harman, and have been so since the demise of Agfa, who used to make it for them, it is indeed a nice paper, and tones well in both sepia and, unusualy for a RC paper, tones well in selinium.

pdeeh · Nov 7, 2013

ah! thank you, that is rather interesting,
My boxes are a few years old, though they were still sealed and apparently properly stored. The contents certainly print perfectly well.

I don't know when Agfa went West. I may drop a line to Fotospeed with the batch numbers to see if they can tell me when they were manufactured. I suppose it is possible it is old Agfa-manufactured stock.

AgX · Nov 7, 2013

pdeeh said:
I don't know when Agfa went West.

Agfa sold their Consumer Imaging department in November of 2004. Under the new owner the department went into insolvency in May 2005. Coating ended 5 months later.

ADOX Fotoimpex · Nov 10, 2013

I suppose it is possible it is old Agfa-manufactured stock.

In case you find out it is Agfa paper you might want to know that it is still manufactured today by us as ADOX MCP ;-)

pdeeh · Nov 18, 2013

Fotospeed were kind enough to give me a bit of information about the current paper, and it seems it is NOT manufactured in the UK.
They didn't tell me who manufactured it (that's commercially sensitive information) but they did tell me in which country it is manufactured.
However as I haven't got explicit permission from them to state that here, I'm not going to do so.

The "bottom line" is that the Fotospeed paper I'm using is identical to their current offering, so that makes me happy.

miha · Nov 18, 2013

Oh, come on, that's teasing....

Fotospeed says heavyweight, is there any truth to that compared to other papers?

pdeeh · Nov 18, 2013

miha, I don't have sufficient experience of other papers to reply in any way that makes it useful; also while it might appear that I'm being a tease, I really am just trying to play it fair by Fotospeed.

Fotospeed papers - manufacturer?

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