RJBender said:
Bill, when you said,
I agree. I just find it interesting how many people feel bitterness towards Kodak and want to 'punish them' for not supporting film. Then they complain that Kodak is laying off employees. Duh.
who were you referring to?
Whom! I don't recall the names, but I remember reading the comments some folks were making about Kodak - something along the lines of "Well, that's the last roll of film I buy from those fiends! How dare they lay off workers and close film plants instead of supporting us film guys!" Or, "I only buy film from companies that support the little guy." OK, but the logic is that they'll lay off more workers if nobody buys the product to punish them for laying off workers.
Yes, I would rather pay more taxes for job retraining of laid off workers than spend it on a company's products to keep the company from laying off it's employees. 🙂
We just went through the tobacco buy-out here in NC. Sounds familiar!
This
Bloomberg report said the cut back in film production will be at Kodak's production facility in
China:
During the quarter Kodak said it would close its plant making photographic paper in Rochester and cut back film-making capacity in Xiamen, China. It also is shutting a manufacturing plant it bought in its purchase of Creo Inc. in June.
Check out this report from
China Daily:
Established in 1998, Kodak's Xiamen branch has become the largest production base of imaging materials in Asia and the world's largest one-time-use camera maker.
According to statistics from the branch, the base is currently able to produce 190 million rolls of film and 90 million square meters printing paper every year. Its products are mainly exported to the Asia-Pacific area, Europe and the United States.
The last 2 Kodak Gold film cartridges that I will ever buy, are not marked "made in China" or "made in USA" . I don't have the box but I'm curious what is printed on the box.
If they're making film in China and they still can't make a profit, something is wrong with this company.
I don't think Kodak has been importing the film they make in China into the USA for sale here (as Kodak-branded film, anyway). You have to go back a bit farther...
Kodak got into a bidding war with Fuji for the right to buy a big chunk of Lucky Film Company in China, which they 'won' if you want to call it that.
They took a one-time hit of one billion dollars to modernize and upgrade the plant.
At the time, the reasoning was that China's growing middle-class economy would next begin to desire consumer products such as sold in the West, and film would have a pretty deep penetration into households that previously had not seen even televisions. China's pretty big, so it would taken ten or so years to saturate the market with film and cameras that use it. The Lucky plant would be ideal - locally produce the film, with local labor and without all that nonsense about pollution controls and whatnot, no import duties, blah blah blah.
However, and this is a mistake the eggheads made at Kodak, they failed to take into account technology skipping in emerging markets.
Emerging markets that have never had a telephone don't get a telephone. They go straight to a cell phone. They don't have to, nor do they want to, have a 50 year gap between the one and the other, as we did in the USA as the technologies slowly grew up naturally.
They won't buy film cameras in China as they get middle-class jobs and buy a house in the burbs. They'll buy digital cameras. Film is a non-player in an emerging market.
This is basic stuff, and it's seen everywhere in emerging nations and economies. That they missed it is very bad - someone's head should have come off over this. Emerging markets don't buy horses and buggies - they buy cars. New technology is what will be demanded, not last century's big hits.
All is not lost - there is still the market that China already has for film, and now Lucky is exporting some small amounts of film, searching for an external market for their products. You can even buy Lucky brand film mail-order in the USA now, from J&C I think. I bought a few rolls recently, I just haven't had time to test it yet - I'm sure the quality has improved since Kodak bought into Lucky and upgraded their plant. And there are many traditional film markets in third-world countries that may absorb Lucky's film output - they still have the economies of making it in China and shipping it from there instead of the USA.
Best Regards,
Bill Mattocks
