Yes, Afga are basically passing the consumer photography - film and paper
to a smaller leaner business, with the hope they can keep it running under
the current difficult circumstances. You can read the actual press release
on their site.
I suspect it will mean a trimming of the less profitable areas though,
which may well be black and white paper.
Ilford seems even more serious, with sales of their black and white paper
dropping I think it was 26% this year. I'm surprised to some extent, as I
would have thought the switch to digital would have had a greater effect
on colour, since getting good black and white from an inkjet is much
harder than getting decent colour prints.
They have accountants trying to organise a business from the UK company
that anyone would want to buy; if they can't do this, then the whole thing
will collapse and be sold up. Ilford was one of the oldest companies
making black and white materials, and also led in many ways. We can thank
them for phenidone, for making multigrade materials usable and popular
(and for still making the best available) and also for chromogenic films.
Emulsions such as FP3 and FP4 were at one time the best in their class.
I'll personally be sad if Ilford Multigrade papers go out of production,
but we just are not using enough of them now.
Peter Marshall
Photography Guide at About http://photography.about.com/
email: photography.guide@about.com
_________________________________________________________________
London's Industrial Heritage: http://petermarshallphotos.co.uk/
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My London Diary http://mylondondiary.co.uk/
and elsewhere......
Received on Thu Aug 26 14:09:09 2004
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