Is FilmoTec operating?

[Fredrixxon]

Or they just sell leftovers found in their fridge?

 

[koraks]

AFAIK they rely on rented capacity at the Polaroid facilities in Monheim, making them essentially a 'fabless' outfit. Production runs would be intermittent; produce a batch, sell it to raise capital so the cycle can be repeated. Whether this is a stable dynamic, I don't know. The future is always hard to predict, and in the case of these tiny outfits held together with shoestring budgets it's even hard to predict the present much of the time.

 

[polaromar]

Given that they're actively developing ORWO NC200, Lomography just signed on to sell additional batches, and are still turning the crank on existing ORWO products, they almost certainly are still around.

As koraks said, they rent time from Polaroid Monheim. It makes sense with how small their volume is.

 

[Fredrixxon]

Online shop is out of bulk stock for months, may be longer, selling only cassetted films and expired garbage. I'd say they are sleeping on the crank. Or are down at all.

 

[polaromar]

The ORWO store has always had their bulk rolls backlogged. In my fridge right now are several rolls of Opticolor 200 (ORWO NC200) and Adox Color Mission which were produced this year, so production is still going on.

Given that they're reliant on Polaroid, who has limited capacity and is in the same boat of being unable to keep up with demand, it's not surprising that their stock is limited. I believe they're also reliant on an external partner for packaging too, which is another bottleneck.

The expired films are hardly garbage, I've used them. They're less than a year expired and definitely been kept well.