HHPhoto
Well-known
Hello Bill,
then it is time tow for you to admit your wrongness concerning Agfa....😉.
In fact, lots of your statements were wrong.
You said that there is no new film coating plant. That is wrong. There is a complete new, modern emulsioning and coating plant in Monheim, Germany.
They started production last year.
This company is 'InovisCoat', www.inoviscoat.de
InovisCoat was founded by former Agfa Leverkusen/Germany employees. All InovisCoat employees are former Agfa engineers and technicians.
InovisCoat bought the Coating machine 'K' from the AgfaPhoto insolvency, scaled it down and modernized it, moved with it from Leverkusen to Monheim and started production in April 2009. In a complete new, modern plant.
Former AgfaPhoto in Leverkusen had two big coating machines, one of them was bought by InovisCoat.
By the way, the other machine was not bought by the Koreans as you said. They bought a machine for making film base material (Triazetat), not a coating machine.
The coating machine at InovisCoat is now called "Phönix", and they can coat lots of different materials with it. Currently they are making BW paper, color negative paper and BW films. They are making both the MCC and the MCP paper for Adox/Fotoimpex. Adox has no own coating capabilities, InovisCoat is doing it for them (but Adox is currently building up a slitting and packaging facility http://www.adoxfotowerke.de/Manufaktur/Foto-Manufaktur.html ).
And they have done first test runs of APX 400 emulsions. It is planned to offer the market this old Agfa emulsion as Adox AP 400 this year. APX 100 will follow next year as Adox AP 100.
And InovisCoat is also running some coatings for the second german film manufacturer Filmotec www.filmotec.de
Filmotec has made the Rollei Pan 25 (sold also under label Adox Pan 25) and Rollei Ortho 25 (sold also under label Adox Ortho 25).
So yes, there is a kind of new Agfa: The former Agfa (Leverkusen) engineers with their new company InovisCoat. Agfa stuff, Agfa coating machine, Agfa paper (MCC, MCP, sold as Adox) and Agfa film (APX 100&400, sold as Adox).
And there is even more, a kind of second revival of original Agfa film from Agfa-Gevaert in Belgium (www.agfa.com). They are still in business and producing lots of color negative, slide and BW films (by the way, much higher BW film volumes than Ilford).
By the cooperation of Agfa-Gevaert with Maco Photo Products in Germany (brand Rollei-Film) the market for 'normal' photographers has now much more Agfa film options than ever in history:
Agfa Copex Rapid (=Spur DSX 64)
Rollei ATP
Rollei Retro 80S (Agfa Aviphot Pan 80)
Rollei Superpan 200 (Agfa Aviphot Pan 200)
Rollei Retro 400S (Agfa Aviphot Pan 400)
Rollei IR (Agfa Aviphot Pan 400)
Forget the AgfaPhoto Holding and their distributor Lupus Imaging. They rape the name AgfaPhoto. It is just relabelling: The AgfaPhoto color negative films are from Ferrania, the color slide film Precisa is from Kodak (Elitechrome 100), and APX 100 and 400 is old stock from the last production run in Leverkusen.
The photo film market in general: It is not as bad as some say. Not all film types have decreasing rates of 30% a year. That is only cheap consumer color negative film.
I have talked with all the film manufacturers at last Photokina. All of them said that BW film has stabilised, decreasing of sales numbers is already stopped. Kodak said their BW film sales had an increase by 8%.
The decrease of professional film (CN and Slide) is slowing down, some film types have already stabilised. LF film has an increase by 30%.
By the way: Do you know the most succesful photo company of the last years?
No, it is not a digital company. It is a company totally dedicated to film, the Lomographic Society in Vienna www.lomography.com
They have growth rates of 50% year by year! Whereas most digital manufacturers are already facing decraesing sales numbers (first signs of market saturation), last year 10-20% less sales at most digital manufacturers.
In the meanwhile lomography has become an established part of photography with over 1 million lomographers worldwide, and the number is rapidly increasing. LSI is opening new lomograpy gallery stores every four months worldwide, the last in London, Rio and Berlin.
They had the most impressive and one of the biggest booths at last Photokina in Cologne. The slogan "the future is analogue" was written in big letters over the booth. They are attracting especially young photographers to film photography.
They sell some of their own special films (slide and redscale films) in 7 (!) digit sales numbers.
Lomography has become a mass market, especially in China where LSI is very engaged and active.
Film will be there for decades to come. We have over 1 billion people taking photographs worldwide, and this number is growing because of the economoc growth in the developing countries. Even if only 1 percent, or even only 0.5 percent of them will use film, it remains a market of several million users worldwide. Enough to keep film alive.
And film will not be much pricier in the future, because it is possible to make film in smaller volumes at reasonable prices: In 2010 photo film sales will be at 20% of the niveau of the record year 1999.
And what happened with prices during this decade? If you consider inflation, film is cheaper now than ten years ago (at least here in Germany 🙂). Cheaper, and the quality is much better due to new emulsion technology.
Look at the new Adox MCC and MCP: Produced in much smaller olumes, but no higher prices than the original Agfa paper from 2005.
Or have a look at Foma films: They have only a fraction of the production volumes of Kodak, but the prices are much lower, same with Efke or Lucky films.
And Adox AP 100&400 films will be in the same price range as Agfa APX in 2005. And AP 400 will be produced in extremely small volumes of only 3000m² per year. That is a niche in the niche in the niche production. Yes, now we see that it is possible.
In 1981 the first still video camera was introduced, the Mavica. The "experts" said that till 1990 film will be dead.
I was also on Photokina 2002: All the "experts" say that in 2010 there will no film be available any more, or if then only at outrageous prices.
Now the same people say that in 2015 or 2020 film will be dead. I bet that in 2020 we will be sitting here, with lots of different film types around at reasonable prices, and the same people will say that in 2025 or 2030 film will be dead........
"Same procedure as last year Miss Sophie? Same procedure as every year James...." 😀
Best regards,
Jan
