I got a note from my friend Jan, who is a serious student of such things, from Germany.
I will what post he wrote-- a number of interesting points.
>>Rodinal was introduced by Agfa in 1891 and it was their entry into photographic products. By 1941 their patent expired. So anyone was free to use the recipe after WWII. Though Agfa kept the tradename "Rodinal", so any clone had to be distributed under a different name.
Despite that there had been two Agfas in Germany after WWII, there was only one Rodinal. During the first years after the war the Calbe plant of the East German Agfa (Wolfen) produced it exclusively. It took a couple of years for the West German Agfa (Leverkusen) to put up a production line for chemicals near Leverkusen. But when production commenced, it was according to the old recipe they shared with the Calbe plant.
Finally, in the early 1960s, Agfa Leverkusen won the trademark trial against Agfa Wolfen, so from January 23, 1964, Agfa Wolfen was renamed into OrWo (Original Wolfen). However, both companies shared many pre-war recipes and obviously there was no problem with it.
For Foma it was fairly easy to reproduce Rodinal after WWII, because the recipe was now in the public domain, but the same naming (R09) suggests that they took a license from Agfa Wolfen / Orwo.
I don't think that there are any newly made products of Agfa. In 2004 there was a management buy-out of the photographic department from the Agfa-Gevaert company, which became Agfaphoto. But soon Agfaphoto went into receivership, because millions of Euros of its capital miraculously vanished into thin air, presumably into the pockets of some greedy managers or it had been plundered by hedge funds. Nevertheless, Agfaphoto was facing the digital challenge, but they were prepared. The marketing department of Agfa always had been very good and diligent and they didn't expect a big growing market for traditional photographic products, though they saw a good chance to supply a small, but stable market of photographic enthusiasts.
You may parallel this to Ilford, which also went into receivership in 2004, but made it out of it thanks to the large and devoted crowd of b/w fans. So Agfaphoto might have survived, too. Now they're more or less selling their trademark. I doubt that they're producing any photographic materials. Their factories closed down in November 2005.
You still can buy b/w film labelled Agfaphoto, but I suppose it is repackaged Ilford film, be it either old formula FP4 / HP5 or Ilford Pan 100 / 400. I can't say, as I haven't tried yet. Might be also Foma, which would be much closer to the Agfa tonality.
One can still buy original Agfa formula chemicals from Calbe, e.g. N113 is Neutol NE, or A03 equals Refinal (which is a member of the D76 / ID11 family) - and, of course, R09 (= Rodinal). Unfortunately, there is no replacement for Sistan which was created in 1980 as an image silver protectant and has become integral to my processing of b/w RC prints. <<
Sorry for another long post, but I think there is interesting information, Jan has followed these things comprehensively for years, and as another qualifier he named his mom's late B&W cat Ilford ;-)
Regards, John
