Harrow Kodak Factory Closing

[DREW WILEY]

First of all, we're not talking about film here, but RA4 paper. The amount of it still used by snapshot photofinishers of the quickie variety is undeniably
fading quickly. Lots of people absolutely hate the look of automated digi "machine prints", lots of others simply do that kind of thing at home now, and many many more just look at their digi shots on the web period. None of that factors into the square footage volume being used by big laser printers for commercial applications, or equivalent optical enlargement. Nor are those kinds of outfits going to simply discard the major scanner,
printer, and processing investment they put into it, which can easily run a couple million dollars. Those that are throwing in the towel around here are doing it simply due to ordinary retirement constraints. Fuji itself is into all kinds of things. They're huge. But no octopus is going to sacrifice an arm
just because it will still have seven other arms. Large color inkjet prints are obscenely expensive for what you get. But even labs that offer both RA4
and inkjet services still have to balance client preferences and budgets. Just depends. Mid-sized corporations might simply do in-house display prints
to avoid an outside lab completely, while others might be quite cognizant of the much lower cost of RA4 multiples. Again, I'm talking pro stuff here,
not Aunt Maude's snapshots of her vacation to the headquarters of Krispy Kreme donuts.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Cosmetics? The world epicenter of cosmetics R&D is in this very neighborhood, right alongside biotech because they are very closely related (FDA physiology, quality control personnel, huge specialized university labor pool). Fuji has never come up in a conversation; but maybe they don't market in the US either, or maybe I wouldn't even know because I'm typically involved in addressing facility maintenance issues. Some cosmetics are very very tightly controlled for user safety; some are outright toxic and carcinogenic, like typical nail polishes, which contain ingredients long outlawed in paint per se. Fuji does have a big stake in video, medical imagery, all kinds of scientific things that don't come up in conversation here. Even Nikon
makes most of their their money in scientific and medical fields, not in stuff we talk about.

 

[RattyMouse]

Nikon makes the vast majority of their profits from cameras and lenses. Thom Hogan has written extensively about how poorly Nikon's scientific and semiconductor businesses have performed.

 

[Prof_Pixel]

From a source very close to the Harrow operation: "The Eclr paper is going to be outsourced to Carestream Colorado"

 

[DREW WILEY]

What the dingdong would some web pixie pixel chat site know about medical imaging or its profitability? There are whole divisions of various corporations out there that report on a different wavelength. Do you really think Nikon would be dumb enough to put all their eggs in one basket, especially since it faces dire competition from cell phone cameras and other consumer electronics intrusion? I am no expert at this; but I am
surrounded by research corporations that don't blink an eye about spending millions on a single device.

 

[Prof_Pixel]

Carestream Colorado is the old Kodak Colorado operations and it has many parts, including Carestream Contract Manufacturing Custom Coating Services. See http://www.tollcoating.com/company/contact-us/

 

[Sirius Glass]

I wish Kodak would do us all a favour and hurry up and die instead of going through this long drawn out death scene with an announcement here and an announcement there. Why doesn't it just top itself and make a clean death of it.

Not funny and definitely not appreciated.

 

[RobC]

wasn't meant to be funny.

 

[Wayne]

And it wouldn't be funny, for the reason Drew gave. Bye-bye Kodak means bye-bye Ektar and Portra which would be the death of color photography for me. I share the frustrations that Kodak doesn't seem to want to live...

 

[RobC]

One minute kodak says film is dead. The next minute it isn't. Which way is the wind blowing this week. Must be dead again since they're shutting down production facilities again.

 

[Lachlan Young]

And it wouldn't be funny, for the reason Drew gave. Bye-bye Kodak means bye-bye Ektar and Portra which would be the death of color photography for me. I share the frustrations that Kodak doesn't seem to want to live...

Perhaps they actually do want to survive & are having to do this precisely because they want to still be around to offer these products. I'd guess that the toll-manufacturing costs at Carestream will be considerably less than totally reworking the Harrow site, especially if the Colorado plant is where the display materials are currently made.

People would do well to remember how drastically Harman had to downsize their workforce.

 

[mnemosyne]

One minute kodak says film is dead. The next minute it isn't. Which way is the wind blowing this week. Must be dead again since they're shutting down production facilities again.

Now, what does film have to do with it? The Harrow plant is currently NOT (repeat N-O-T), and has not been for years, a film production facility. It has been stated and repeated numerous times in this thread and elsewhere. Harrow manufactures RA-4 paper, the market for which is completely different from the film market. Is this really so difficult to understand?

 

[Alan Johnson]

I have seen that site in Harrow. It ls in a residential area where prices have risen rapidly.

 

[twelvetone12]

Are we talking about Kodak Alaris or Eastman Kodak? They are two quite different entireties.

 

[Cycler]

It's the age-old multinational game. Make stuff where labour's dirt cheap. Sell it where wages are high and folk can afford luxuries like permanent images.
Also most folk just keep their pics in the unit that produced them. And they're amazingly careless with those units. There must be thousands of families recent histories in 'lost' cameras, phones, computers etc!

 

[RattyMouse]

Are we talking about Kodak Alaris or Eastman Kodak? They are two quite different entireties.

Alaris.

 

[Prest_400]

On the photofinishing side. I've seen that most labs and big photofinishers that print C-type mostly do it on Fuji paper. Interestingly, a couple years ago I wanted to see which did kodak and it is much less present than Fuji's counterpart.

Alaris on film I guess they kind of keep some of their presence in B38 together with the Eastman part.

 

[MattKing]

Are we talking about Kodak Alaris or Eastman Kodak? They are two quite different entireties.

Kodak Alaris.

Different, but connected in ways that are important to APUG members.

 

[RattyMouse]

On the photofinishing side. I've seen that most labs and big photofinishers that print C-type mostly do it on Fuji paper. Interestingly, a couple years ago I wanted to see which did kodak and it is much less present than Fuji's counterpart.

Alaris on film I guess they kind of keep some of their presence in B38 together with the Eastman part.

The lab I use that still prints on photo paper uses Fuji exclusively. I havent seen Kodak paper in ages.

 

[RattyMouse]

When I moved to China, 6 years ago, Kodak had an extensive array of photo printing Kiosks. A few years into my stay there, Kodak sold them all off and the exited the China photo printing market. You know, THE largest market in the world. HP came in and refurbished all those Kiosks and they continue to sell prints to this day.

Fuji expands. HP expands. Kodak retreats.

 

[MattKing]

The lab I use that still prints on photo paper uses Fuji exclusively. I havent seen Kodak paper in ages.

The lab that I use prints exclusively on Kodak paper. The other pro lab in town that I use for developing E6 uses Fuji paper (I think).

The market for photographic paper is very price sensitive and very competitive.

 

[Vonder]

If only this video had been real... at least a few jobs would still be with Kodak.

 

[DREW WILEY]

The Chinese film industry is the thousand pound gorilla lurking on the horizon. The fact they're building massive traditional movie sets might mean
that at least some producers could spur renewed volume of at least someone's color film. They even bought up all the old classic Technicolor
tricolor cameras, and have vast stockpiles of Technicolor dye powders in storage for a what-if scenario. This doesn't address RA4 paper per se, and
won't stop the march of digital projection; but it might give a second wind to the whole economy underlying the photographic coating industry. I
certainly don't have any crystal ball. I do know how arbitrarily corporate heads can sometimes make decisions, for better or worse (usually worse).
But I'm no pessimist either. Say RA4 supplies start seriously fading away in fifteen years. Then another fifteen could be added by intelligent storage
means. By that time, I will have either faded away myself or be too old and shaky to do color darkroom work anyway. Thirty years was a long time
to dodge annoying product changes even in the heyday of film and paper. And look at it this way, you doom & gloom types - how much digi printing
software or printing gear will still be usable even a decade from now without serious reinvestment? No, the grass is not greener on the other side
of the fence.

 

[Lachlan Young]

The Chinese film industry is the thousand pound gorilla lurking on the horizon. The fact they're building massive traditional movie sets might mean
that at least some producers could spur renewed volume of at least someone's color film. They even bought up all the old classic Technicolor
tricolor cameras, and have vast stockpiles of Technicolor dye powders in storage for a what-if scenario. This doesn't address RA4 paper per se, and
won't stop the march of digital projection; but it might give a second wind to the whole economy underlying the photographic coating industry. I
certainly don't have any crystal ball. I do know how arbitrarily corporate heads can sometimes make decisions, for better or worse (usually worse).
But I'm no pessimist either. Say RA4 supplies start seriously fading away in fifteen years. Then another fifteen could be added by intelligent storage
means. By that time, I will have either faded away myself or be too old and shaky to do color darkroom work anyway. Thirty years was a long time
to dodge annoying product changes even in the heyday of film and paper. And look at it this way, you doom & gloom types - how much digi printing
software or printing gear will still be usable even a decade from now without serious reinvestment? No, the grass is not greener on the other side
of the fence.

It also depends on what sort of maximum sheet size you're prepared to put up with - the ADOX Marly machine would be able to make an RA4 paper if it became necessary.

I suspect that the digital camera will have become the CD of the imaging world long before RA4 goes away.

 

[1L6E6VHF]

Major manufacturing locations include:
.........

• Manaus, Brazil
• ....

How many people does Kodak Alaris employ?
More than 3,000 worldwide – and counting

Does it seem odd to anyone other than I that they would be making photographic papers in Manaus, hot, humid, and so far from markets?

I would have expected Curitiba, Joinville, or the São Paulo area.