From: Sil Horwitz (silh@earthlink.net)
Date: 08/04/00-10:46:49 PM Z
It may interest all people on this list who are salivating over Super
XX that Kodak set up a complete SXX plant in China about ten years ago,
and much of the "local" Chinese BW film was (and probably still is) SXX.
From what I understand, they moved all the technology (machinery,
nstrumentation, etc) to the Chinese location. They did this in return for
certain color film sales rights (plus whatever else was necessary to make
the transfer profitable). So all the talk about Kodak gearing up to
manufacture this film in the US would require some pretty extensive cash
outlays for what they consider an obsolete film. I think if you look at the
sales curve (prior to selling the equipment, etc., to China) it was almost
a straight drop down when the Tgrain films were introduced. No
profit-driven company is going to continue the manufacture of a dead
product when the death is due to a (publicly perceived) improved product.
When I was in China I bought a bunch of Chinese SuperXX film and found it
more like the old SuperX, quite inferior. But - VERY cheap (like 50 cents
per 24 exp 35mm roll). (And that was in the high-priced "foreign" stores in
which the "natives" weren't allowed to shop. Probably cheaper in the local
stores.)
Sil Horwitz, FPSA
Technical Editor, PSA Journal
teched@psa-photo.org
silh@earthlink.net
Visit http://www.psa-photo.org/
Personal page: http://home.earthlink.net/~silh/
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