perhaps part of the rationale for launching Kentmere 200 is that particular gap in the market
And/ or the use of respooled Kodak 5222 - going off the Ilford statement, it would also appear that the new film will differentiate in baseline characteristics from K100/400 - and be a little more expensive. And, there are various other market motivations (not least that lot of C-41 films sold today are 200's).
If Harman feel that Delta 400 has fallen terribly behind Tmax 400, you can bet they'd be very intent on improving Delta 400. However, it may well be more costly and time consuming than introducing a new traditional grained 200ISO B&W film.
And at this point in history, I cannot imagine Harman screwing up a production run of FP4...nor that a company with their reputation and standing in the industry would market it as a new product.
Exactly, given the level of emulsion design/ manufacturing control they have, making a product like this will have been relatively more trivial than many seem to want/ need to believe.
On the other hand, this product may be the offshoot of other emulsion R&D that will be ongoing, and like Phoenix, being sold to recoup the costs - but because it's inherently a much more final emulsion, albeit without the more complex steps/ components used in Ilford branded materials, it's being sold under the Kentmere brand. If it's an epitaxial emulsion structure, there may be clues to be gleaned from that.
@Alex Benjamin that looks a lot like the layout of the Ilford paper box labels - who knows, maybe they're about to start packaging their panchromatic paper in sheets - or something more specialised like a lith paper (strongly doubt that).
