TMax 400 in the UK

After several years of working with Neopan 400, I've given up and tried TMax 400, which I really like. Alas, TMax is quite expensive, so I was considering bulk loading it. As I understand it, a 100ft roll (30.5m) gives you about 18 films. The pricing doesn't make sense to me.

Morco individual roll £2.50
Morco bulk roll £47 = £2.61

Silverprint individual roll £2.50
Silverprint bulk roll £44.81 = £2.49

7dayshop individual roll £2.20

B+H individual roll $4.25 = £2.12 approx
B+H bulk roll $49.95 = £25 = £1.39 approx

So, I can understand in the states it's totally worthwhile to bulk roll. Here in the UK, I see no reason to bulk roll. Surely there must be a UK supplier of TMax in bulk at a decent price?

Edit - just seen there's a similar post going on, but it still doesn't explain why the ratio between single rolls and bulk is so small here in the UK.

It's probably Kodak's pricing policy in the UK, but then Ilford's bulk films similarly priced, and at the moment individual films are much more expensive.

When I was in Santiago last November shops near the Universities were selling 36ex of FP4 & HP5 from bulk rolls far cheaper than the pre-packed film. It always used to be far cheaper to buy bulk film.

Ian

Film pricing: Crapshoot

Overlooking pricing due to expiration or some kind of a special, film pricing remains illogical. For instance, right here in the US of A, residence of The Great Yellow Father, we find (Freestyle, selected examples):

Plus-X $5.49 for a 36 exp roll, $45 for a 100 foot

Tri-X $3.99 for the 36, $49 for the hunny.

Can you find the pattern? I can't!

Ove in the T grain department:

TMX $5.09, $50.00

TMY $5.29, $50.00

Wha? It costs more to spool TMY than TMX?? No bloody likely.

Then there is the new Arista Premium line. Either speed, $1.99 in carts, or $30 for hundreds. So, you can avoid all the hassles of bulk loading by paying an effective price of $36 per hundred feet.

FS used to buy bulk Ilford and Kodak, spool it using their labor, and STILL beat the official prices of the film companies.

As they say, go figger.

This doesn't make much sense. It's like how on an airline one guy in one seat may have paid $200 for his ticket and the chap in the VERY NEXT SEAT had to pay $450.

wintoid said:

After several years of working with Neopan 400, I've given up and tried TMax 400, which I really like. Alas, TMax is quite expensive, so I was considering bulk loading it. As I understand it, a 100ft roll (30.5m) gives you about 18 films. The pricing doesn't make sense to me.

Morco individual roll £2.50
Morco bulk roll £47 = £2.61

Silverprint individual roll £2.50
Silverprint bulk roll £44.81 = £2.49

7dayshop individual roll £2.20

B+H individual roll $4.25 = £2.12 approx
B+H bulk roll $49.95 = £25 = £1.39 approx

So, I can understand in the states it's totally worthwhile to bulk roll. Here in the UK, I see no reason to bulk roll. Surely there must be a UK supplier of TMax in bulk at a decent price?

Edit - just seen there's a similar post going on, but it still doesn't explain why the ratio between single rolls and bulk is so small here in the UK.

Click to expand...

In Germany, you pay ca. 2.50 Euros plus 19% VAT per individual roll, or about 47 Euros plus 19% VAT for a bulk roll - bulk rolls are more expensive.

It doesn't look like it should make sense, but I suspect that its more to do with the film companies selling more than 20 rolls in cannisters, to a reel of bulk load.

From a production point of view, the costs of changing the line over to run bulk reel instead of can, will outweigh the savings from not having to supply the canister, and also the volumes of reels are much less.

If of course you are a school who buys in bulkload enough to get volume discount....

I cannot work this out either. Looking at a fairly small shop in the UK, Mathers of Bolton, the charge for 30m of Ilford D100 is £37. For the same amount of film in 36 frame cassettes it is £54. A massive saving.

I cannot believe that Mathers has such buying leverage with Ilford that it can negotiate a large reduction on bulk film prices but somehow is stuck with accepting a much larger price on Ilford cassettes.

I think it more likely that Ilford can sell bulk film to Mathers much more cheaply than it can sell cassettes and Mathers then simply passes on its savings to the customer but in effect makes the same profit or at least a reasonable profit that satisfies the business and sells bulk film

If Mathers can buy bulk Ilford film and sell for less than the equivalent number of cassettes then why not the others? It suggests to me that the price of bulk TMax to the end customer does not fully reflect the savings that the retailer may make.

Unfortunately Mathers stock of Kodak film is much more limited and there are no bulk Kodak films for sale there. This may reflect Mathers faith in Ilford products and/or lack of desire to commit to Kodak or it may be that Mathers would say if asked that there's no point in bulk Kodak film as the price Kodak charges for it means that cassettes are almost as cheap.

If so, then how come the same economics that apply to Ilford's policy of bulk film sales vis a vis cassettes do not apply to Kodak?

More questions than answers

pentaxuser