Ilford prices skyrocketing

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Did you hear this? It's the confirmation of a rumoured twenty percent price increase that our local dealers announced. Here in continental Europe and Canada where Ilford papers and films already cost almost twice as much as in England, even the die-hard Ilford fans are not amused. It affects more or less all Harman products labeled Ilford and Kentmere and, sooner or later, all 'Kentmere inside' products with other labels like Bergger and other papers, probably the new Rollei RPX films and anything else coming from the Harman empire.

This was the official confirmation in apug.org:

Note From HARMAN technology Limited : Re Price Increases

Dear All,

ILFORD Photo prices will indeed rise ex.factory from 1st February 2011. Firstly, let me assure you prices will NOT be rising across the board by 30.00% on film and paper.

We are absolutely determined to keep our product costs as low as possible, we have not had a worldwide price increase since September 2009, although some markets have had prices altered ad interim.

The cause of this increase is not only silver, but it is by far the biggest element, we have had significant rises in base costs, fine chemicals, taxation, employment costs, transport and energies. We have worked incredibly hard to try and offset these increases by cost savings and efficiencies in the factory and by necessity reducing staff numbers in 2009. HARMAN technology Limited had not planned ANY increase in prices AT ALL during 2011.

We always monitor silver prices on a daily basis, the huge incremental rise in the last four months was not expected, we had envisaged a gradual rise, as people invested in silver and other commodities due to currency uncertainties backed by growing industrial ( not photo ) demand.

Many suppliers raised prices in 2010 ( and probably will again ) we did not, we wished to see if silver would stabilise, we also hold significant stocks of coated parent rolls and we have been using up that stock in the last 12 weeks. All product now being finished and shipped is product coated with silver at the current elevated prices and these additional costs just cannot be absorbed by HARMAN technology Limited.

Prices do vary from market to market, this is a very, very complex equation of currency, import duties, local taxes, shipping costs, local delivery costs and distributor and reseller margins, currency fluctuations are by far the biggest introducer of anomolies in pricing around the world not the prices charged ex.factory.

New prices have been notified to resellers by distributors around the world for products leaving distributors after February 1st 2011.

Price does affect the volume of goods sold, that is an absolute fact, so we have a total determination to keep ILFORD Photo products at a fair price.

Since HARMAN technology Limited was established six years ago we have always looked at different manufacturing options and technologies to grow our business, but fundamental to our business is the monochrome product range, the photo business will remain the largest part of our business for some appreciable time. In 2011 we have NO plans to delete ANY products whatsoever from our range and following excellent field trial feedback a brand new ILFORD Paper will be launched worldwide in Q2 2011.

We thank all our customers who buy and value our products.

Simon. ILFORD Photo, HARMAN technology LImited :​
 
Well ... aside from Pan F nothing much excites me in the Ilford range so I can live with it!
 
I love the XP2 Super film but it is priced too high.

Too high for what? I mean, how do they get the prices down? Simon's post on APUG sets out the case pretty convlncingly.

I've been seriously considering standardizng on home-processed XP2 instead of HP5, I like it so much.

Cheers,

R.
 
I suspect this is only the beginning of a general price increase for all film/papers that contain silver - check the silver prices and you'll understand at least part of the price hike!
 
In the UK rises in VAT, fuel price, cost of silver etc etc. have meant that more or less everything is unfortunately increasing in price.

John
 
I use only HP5+ in 120, but from time to time I use Fomapan 400. Also, Fomapan 400 is my standard film for 35mm RF photography, having replaced Tri-X 400. I will go have a look at the prices of czech-made fomapan to see if there was any increase.
 
I suspect this is only the beginning of a general price increase for all film/papers that contain silver - check the silver prices and you'll understand at least part of the price hike!

A 35mm or 120 film contains much less than 1 gram of silver. Telling us that the silver price is the reason for a price increase for films and paper is like the nice stories the oil companies tell us to justify price increases - a small part of the truth only. A company like Harman or Kodak has long-term contracts with their suppliers, they do not buy such important raw material at the spot market at today's price.

The other side of the story is classical economics 101: the exchage rate for the british pound is very, very low. That means on the hand that importing goods into the UK gets more expensive while british companies can offer their products much cheaper. That is, if they want to.

And one thing I don't understand... why are smaller companies like Foma, Efke, Adox or big companies like Kodak and Fuji still able to offer their products much cheaper, especially in Europe? Do they have their own silver mines? 😎
 
Frankly, I'd be keen to see Kodak and Fujifilm raise prices by enough so that the heads of the film divisions can go to the board, and say "Look! Our profits are up!".
 
A 35mm or 120 film contains much less than 1 gram of silver. Telling us that the silver price is the reason for a price increase for films and paper is like the nice stories the oil companies tell us to justify price increases - a small part of the truth only. A company like Harman or Kodak has long-term contracts with their suppliers, they do not buy such important raw material at the spot market at today's price.

The other side of the story is classical economics 101: the exchage rate for the british pound is very, very low. That means on the hand that importing goods into the UK gets more expensive while british companies can offer their products much cheaper. That is, if they want to.

And one thing I don't understand... why are smaller companies like Foma, Efke, Adox or big companies like Kodak and Fuji still able to offer their products much cheaper, especially in Europe? Do they have their own silver mines? 😎

Re-read Simon's post. They've run out of stuff at the old price. There's a limit to how much forward contracting you can so, especially when you buy silver (literally) by the ton.

By coincidence, I've just been talking to Steve Brierley at Ilford, mostly about Direct Positive Paper.

His analysis of the price rises: We can leave prices where they are, and go out of business, or put them up to a price where we can stay in business, provided we can explain WHY the prices have gone up.

Oh: and the exchange rate against the dollar is currently $1.55-$1.60. In the last 30 years it's ranged fom near-parity to around $2/£, so 'very, very low' is simply not true: it's the high side of normal (stronger pound, weaker dollar). It's very weak against the euro.

Cheers,

R.
 
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Good for Ilford. I want to see them remain viable and profitable. If that means a few more bucks for my B&W shooting, I'd rather pay that premium than have it go away.
 
Nice to see that Ilford posted this on a forum in advance of the increases and took the time to explain their reasoning for the increases.

John
 
All we need is a similar announcement from Kodak and suddenly film shooting would really become something of a luxury.
 
Obviously the best thing to do is to find the film/developer/paper combination that works for you, max out a credit card or two so you can buy as much as possible, and stick it in the fridge.
 
Just a reaction of Fotokemika, the manufacturer in Croatia for Efke films:

As it is obvious, we are in the same situation as Harman.

For the last 4-5 months we are experiencing dramatic increase of almost all material costs as well as energy costs.

We have certain stock of already produced b/w films and papers, so we decided to keep our price level for at least several months.

To our knowledge one of the major reasons for recent silver price increase is that China reduced export of silver and also of many rare metals.
China being one of the largest producer of silver can influence significantly on silver prices.

See: http://www.businessweek.com/news/201...this-year.html

Efke (and also Foma) increased their prices this Summer for around 10%.

Overall Efke is taken more % of Silver in their films then other brands so they are affected more severely then other brands.

Fotohuis will stabilize the price of Efke films for the comming months and we bought last year some Silver for a new film project.

Regards,

Robert
 
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