.....
My inner sceptic is wondering if the engineering challenges are still ahead of Film Ferrania to bring back Scotch Chrome. I also wonder if they may be working on other possibilities as the return of Ektachrome may or may not overlap the potential market for Scotch Chrome, depending on Kodak’s plans to offer it in other than Super 8 Carts and 135-36 rolls.
Film Ferania has lost the Big coater, although they say that they have salvaged many parts. The various posts on the subject seem to indicate a plan to use those parts to convert what was built as office space on an adjacent floor into a larger drying area to allow speed up of the small coater. but changing the spped of the coater would proably require many changes in the existing formulas.
.....
For the short term it´s good for Ferrania when Kodak has brought Ektachrome back. As Ferrania also wanted to bring back an E6-film to stabilize the E6-infrastructure, so labs and producers of E6-chemistry. By Kodak bringin back E100D the E6-infrastructure will be stabilized, especially because E100D will be available as S8, too. How many times is the area of an S8 film the size of a 135-film? 6 times or 8 times? Especially cine film is good for E6-infrastructure as movie film needs a lot of chemistry. Of course there won´t be as many S8-cartridges sold as 135s, but it will help because there is no more new produced E6 cine film out there. Avichrome is nearly sold out.
This means by Kodak bringing back E100D some pressure is taken off Ferrania so they don´t need to bring back their Ferraniachrome at any price. They have a little room to make it right now.
As goes for the market there will be some overlapping, but there also are two groups which won´t cause any overlapping:
The "flavour-group":
There always have been customers which bought the film they liked best, regarding colors etc. If all customers only went for technical perfection, like grain-size for example, everyone would have bought Kodachrome only - and all the other manufacturers could have closed their doors decades ago. Just think of the Velvia-discussions with people hating the intense red and people just loving this emulsion.
So today there are people who just don´t buy E6 as they dislike the current Fuji-film and they also dislike the comming Ektachrome. But they will buy Ferraniachrome, because they like this "flavour" - and that´s the first group where there won´t be any overlapping.
The "price-group":
There also are people who just can´t afford current E6-films or aren´t willing to pay current prices. Now Ferranias idea was to expand the R&D-coater to nowadays demand, to be able to produce the most economical. As far as i know Fuji still runs the big machines which isn´t economical nowadays and Kodak does E100D on a R&D-coater which might be a little too small for nowadays market.
Therefore let´s assume that Ferraniachrome will be 15% less costy in production than E100D. That ain´t much of course, but as an european customer wanting E100D the film has to be shipped across the big lake and there will be some customs duty - which increases price of E100D in europe by, let´s again say, 15%.
This means Ferraniachrome would be 30% less in price, compared to E100D on an european shelf - and that´s something.
Then Ferraniachrome could bring back some former E6-users who just can´t or aren´t willing to pay current prices of Fuji and soon Kodak - without taking away Kodaks customers, as the "price-group" doesn´t buy E100D anyway.
....
So there will be some overlapping on the market, but not as much as one might think in the first place. And in the end it was Kodaks "fault" to bring back E100D, Ferrania didn´t ask for it!
As now the "flavour"- and the "price"-group won´t be buying Fuji and Kodak at all, Ferraniachrome will increase the total number of E6-users and thereby also stabilize the E6-infrastructure. This allone is reason enough for Ferrania to continue work on chrome - aside the promise they made to the backers which they want to keep.
Regarding Ferranias coater, as far as i know they wanted to widen it up, so they can coat wider (mini-)jumbos and they wanted to increase the total length of coatable (mini-)jumbos. I don´t think they´d need to run the coater faster for that, they only need to run it for a longer time which shouldn´t require changes in formula - just more "soup" to pour on.