Efke to cease production of photo papers.

Keith

Keith

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In my inbox from Freestyle this morning ... sounds like when their film coating machinery becomes troublesome the end result might be similar. I hope not because I like their film.

One bit of industry-product related news we need to report is the discontinuation of Fotokemika Emaks and Varycon black and white photographic papers by the manufacturer in Croatia. Efke brand films will continue to be produced for the foreseeable future but paper production from this factory will cease. This is due to the coating machinery no longer being economically repairable due to age and current manufacturing volume. While this is sad news, we are continuing dialog with the Fotokemika factory and working with them to acquire as much of Emaks and Varycon paper that they have left to keep this product in stock as long as possible
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Films being produced for the "foreseeable future" is not too reassuring if it is produced on similarly old machinery as the coating machinery for their photo paper was. The coating machinery is not unrepairable they just don't sell enough to make it worth their while.

Bob
 
Not using either their film or paper but this points out a weakness in those small businesses that have stepped into the breach left by the bigger companies' retreat. If the machinery fails, costs might instantly make it impossible to continue. Yikes.

Troubling.
 
What makes every bit of news about another film or paper product discontinuation very disheartening is the fact that over the long run, I fear only one or two companies will have absolute monopoly over film, and charge whatever the please ... Or even worse, we'd all have to shoot colour on digital. Oh wait ...
 
This doesn't sound good for the longterm. I quite like EFKE film, actually waiting on a delivery of some today. Hope they don't down the pan.
 
I'd imagine the turnover for film being much higher than that of paper. Hardly anyone still shooting film spends much time in the darkroom, much less using their papers. I totally expect traditional photographic papers to die out, perhaps leaving only Ilford to produce some MGIV as a prestige thing. My hope for film is that even small companies like Efke will be able to sell enough to keep the machines running. That said, who knows how long we can go with existing machinery... I hope long enough for companies to learn how to make digital cameras that behave more like cameras and less like VCR's and microwave ovens...
 
teddy said:
I thought EFKE film was made by Adox?
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It is way more complex than that. Fotokemika (of then Yugoslavia) purchased the Adox production machinery and patents in the seventies and relocated the plant from Neu Isenburg, Germany to Samobor, Croatia, after Dupont (who had bought Schleussner/Adox) withdrew from the photographic market to focus on technical film. What was not part of the deal was the Adox brand, which Dupont had only licensed from the Schleussner heirs, so they renamed the Adox lineup Efke.

Fotoimpex of Berlin, the main German/EU distributor of Efke produkts recently bought the rights to the Adox name, and began to relabel some Efke products as Adox. But they also started a closer relation with the ex-Agfa coater Inoviscoat and market their products (unrelated to the old Adox stock, but rather directly derived from the last generation of Agfa products) as Adox as well.
 
braver said:
I'd imagine the turnover for film being much higher than that of paper. Hardly anyone still shooting film spends much time in the darkroom, much less using their papers.
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That is doubtlessly right where colour is concerned (where a digital intermediate stage can provide more accurate colour than wet printing ever could), but in black and white, a very considerable amount of people explicitly use film to wet print the old way. And among the rest, it is hard to tell whether printing film scans on black and white modified inkjet printers or printing digital images on Frontier printers loaded with silver paper makes up the majority - there are about the same number of professional labs offering one or the other.

The real issue traditional papers have is the competition from variable contrast materials.
 
Huh...maybe they should see if Kodak kept or scrapped their paper making equipment.....bet they'd be willing to sell it to raise cash.
 
Good for you, but why would you troll a thread with something like that?

I've always preferred the QC on Ilford, Kodak and Fuji but I'm saddened to hear this news. Diversity is good and the more the better.
 
MrFujicaman said:
Huh...maybe they should see if Kodak kept or scrapped their paper making equipment.....bet they'd be willing to sell it to raise cash.
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Kodak AFAIK has no factory in the EU for photographic paper.

Buying machinery stateside would be useless for Efke, it would require disassembly, shipping, reassembly, re-tuning and educating workforce to operate. Effectively that would be more expensive than buying new, I'd say...
 
It really does not matter if they could get a machine like Kodak may have. Kodak's machine probably is designed to produce far, far too much film for the market Efke services and that alone would make it uneconomical to run.

Bob
 
don't use efke a lot, ilford mostly. but i am afraid the lack of competition will give ilford another excuse to hike the price again.
 
It's over with Efke. The production of both, paper and film, will be stopped. It seems to be the final decision of their management.

Mirko from Fotoimpex/Adox was there to speak with them, he says that it's not profitable for Efke to keep the production running anymore, it's a strategic dillema.
Basically the profit margin of Fotokemika is too low because they're forced to keep their prices low to compete against big companies like Kodak or Ilford.



Mirko on the Fotoimpex forum (in German):
http://forum.fotoimpex.de/index.php?showtopic=2589&#entry14376



It's sad :(
 
Unfortunately so. The stuff which is waiting to be trimmed and packaged will go out, then that's it, pretty much.

There is a thread, in English, on APUG with around 200 posts. It has some detailed input from Croatian APUG members, and from the owner of Fotoimpex after his visit to the Fotokemika plant.
 
Sad to hear. I don't use EFKE papers, but I sure like their IR films - more like the Kodak IR films that any of the others.
 
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