3M invested in Ferrania because (i guess) their plan was to compete against Kodak (3M was already a big company by then and was leader in magnetic tape production as well as other types of tape. 3M is an amazing company!)
3M was also very big in industrial and Microfilm, they had "funny" things like a machine that looked and worked like a photocopier, but spit out a strip of processed 16mm Microfllm ready to put in a fiche Jacket. they also had thermal silver Microfilm printers, (thin silver paper that could be handled a Bit in office light, and which when exposed to a blow back form microfilm were "developed" by passing them past a heater roller. They probably were interested in a low cost factory with the capability to make such stuff for them, and foreign exchange made Italy a cheep place to manufacture things in those days.
I have quite a few 16mm B&W movie prints that were made in Ferrania Stock, and a few labelled 3M, but 3M moved away from the movie stocks and B&W in general. I wonder if part of the important stuff for them was the colour paper, as they had a major number of film labs in various places, and of course would perfer to use 3M paper in the 3M labs.
Later 3M split off the imaging division to IMATION and i guess that the corresponding Imation Chrome was aimed more as an amateur, low cost, good E6 film. Which is what I would love to have now.
So the guys at FILM Ferrania must own right now a lot of intellectual property - lots of formulas, etc.
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IMATION was an exit plan for 3M to get out of the Diskette business, they bundled all their recording media businesses into IMATION and spun it off, and as expected it fizzled out as demand went down. I think the 640T and other stocks were marketed while it was still sold as "Scotch Brand" when sold as a 3M product. Microfilm and the like were already fizeling out at the time IMATION came into being.