MirkoBoeddecker
http://www.ftd.de/unternehmen/industrie/64896.html
The price of silver has doubled.
Our films require approx. 6g of silver per square metre; our photographic papers require 1–2g of silver per square metre.
The unfortunate consequence: all Foma, Classic and ADOX prices will be increased by 6–10% at the beginning of May.
All our suppliers have already raised their prices.
Sorry, but there’s nothing we can do about it; it happened too quickly and threw all our planning off course.
Best regards,
Mirko
Gast
Hi Mirko,
Be glad you’re working with silver, and not copper, steel or aluminium (the latter mainly due to energy costs). And that this stuff only accounts for a tiny fraction of the final price.
It’s funny, really, that silver is rising when ‘the analogue photography industry is one of the main buyers of silver’, even though their sales are plummeting left, right and centre... There must be a spoon manufacturer involved somewhere ;)
Regards
Martin
Gast
Oh, were the rights for Rodinal really that expensive in the States?
cfb_de
Hello Mirko,
Let’s assume 3g of silver per square metre. Let’s assume 260g of paper per square metre. In that case, the silver content accounts for less than 1.2% of the paper.
The price of silver, including refining (these costs only actually arise when you want to cast pure silver into ingots), would therefore have had to multiply over the last few weeks to account for a price increase of just 6%. But there hasn’t been such a rise.
Your move, please!
That is not a valid reason for a price increase. You’re operating at the level of a petrol station.
Best regards,
Franz
Gast
That’s not a valid reason for a price increase. You’re operating at the same level as a petrol station.
Is this going to be another bone of contention for the man from Sherwood Forest? ;)
cfb_de
Nah! I don’t need that.
But the facts regarding the price of silver and photographic materials speak for themselves.
Trying to justify a price increase of 6–10% is just like Münchhausen claiming he pulled himself out of the swamp by his own hair. You could almost call it a ‘rip-off’. Just like at the petrol station.
But if, at the same time (what a coincidence...), the ‘special polyethylene’ for photographic paper (incidentally a waste product), the ‘special baryte’ (the main market for which is in medicine: X-ray contrast agents), the “special cellulose” (aka “paper”), the “special gelatin” (only available from Kodak now; everything else is a perfectly ordinary industrial product used for things like gummy bears and custard powder), the “special PET” (raw material: production of returnable/disposable bottles) have all become more expensive too... Then we could have a chat about it. But not like this.
Best regards,
Franz
Kiste
Hi Mirco,
I’ve been diligently filling up the Fix with Ditionit and have already collected a decent
amount.
Can I send it to you and you can credit it against my paper,
which I’ll then order?
Or should I rather wait until I’ve saved up enough for an earring in 20 years’ time – it’ll be worth more than gold by then – and give it to my wife,
who always has to look after me when I order photographic supplies :-)
Regards, Stephan
Gast
Hi Mirko
Every year, the printers complain to me about how tough the market is, but claim they’ve got everything under control; yet now, unfortunately – because paper prices are rising – they have to raise their prices – precisely because of the paper prices. Ha ha ha ...
And when I then look at how little paper I actually need, considering the whole pre-press process and so on ... Well, anyway.
Please be honest: the price of silver has just as little to do with the mark-up as the paper does with my printing costs.
Just say that the supplier wants more for the products or that I need more, otherwise I’ll have to shut up shop.
But that...
Regards, Martin
Gast
Hi Franz,
>Let’s assume 3g of silver per square metre. Let’s assume 260g of paper per square metre. In that case, the silver content doesn’t even make up 1.2% of the paper.
You’re inadvertently confirming the preconceptions about chemists’ maths skills ;-)
The weight percentage is 1.2%, but the price percentage isn’t. Silver is more expensive than paper.
According to Mirko’s link, the price of silver per troy ounce (approx. 31g) has risen from around US$5 to around US$10. That’s an extra US$0.1613 per gram. At 3g/m² and 3.6 m² per 50-sheet pack of 24×30 cm, that works out to an additional cost of US$1.74.
Everyone can work out for themselves what percentage that represents for their favourite paper (conversion US$ -->
Robert
Let’s assume 3g of silver per square metre. Let’s assume 260g of paper per square metre. In that case, the silver content accounts for less than 1.2% of the paper.
If you look at the mass, that is of course correct. But one should probably factor in the prices of the individual components here. With a silver price of approx. 15 EUR/30g, I arrive at a silver content of about 25% of the final price (6 EUR/sq m) for the photographic paper.
MirkoBoeddecker
Naturally, the percentage varies depending on the material.
There are also other costs to consider, such as rising energy prices and inflation.
The direct impact of the silver price accounts for around 3–4% of the residue; the remainder is spread across the other items.
However, the most important sentence in my announcement was this one: “All our suppliers have already raised their prices”.
By 6–10%, in fact.
We must therefore react immediately. We had budgeted for the usual 2–3% price increases, but the additional 4% for silver throws all our planning off course.
In this respect, all the critics are right that my announcement is somewhat incomplete, as a 10% price increase cannot be justified by silver alone.
Exactly how high the price increases for the respective materials will be depends on various factors.
For example, the cheapest paper will have to be increased relatively more than a paper where the pure material costs account for only a smaller percentage.
For reasons of competitiveness, we will of course continue to try to keep our calculations as close to the lower limit as possible.
The increase will therefore be between a minimum of 4% and a maximum of 10%.
Foma, for example, has raised all prices by a flat rate of 6%.
Best regards,
Mirko
PhilippReichmuth
Hi Franz,
You’re thinking on the level of a petrol station.
Others have already said enough about your example, but why not have a chat with the tenant of an Aral petrol station of your choice, just to see. Price gouging certainly goes on in that business, but the person at the petrol station is the one who profits the least yet gets the most flak.
Otherwise, it’s the same old calculation: I buy 10,000 litres of petrol for €1 per litre, payment is due immediately. After I’ve sold 5,000 of them, my supplier’s/franchisor’s/… petrol price rises to €2. How much do I sell the residue of my 5,000 litres for, if I have to reckon that at some point I’ll have to fill my 10,000-litre tank again at 2 EUR/litre?
Philipp
Gast
You’re inadvertently confirming the stereotypes about chemists’ maths skills ;-)
Well, he did get the maths right. He just forgot to think it through.
Gast
Well, he did get the maths right. He just forgot to think it through.
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It was always like that at school. Arithmetic is easy, but the word problems....... :ph34r:
Although Franz is usually quite reliable with his maths.
Regards
Martin
Gast
Hi Franz,
You’re thinking on the level of a petrol station.
Others have already said enough about your maths example, but why not have a chat with the tenant of an Aral petrol station of your choice, just to see. Price gouging certainly goes on in that business, but the person at the petrol station is the one who profits the least yet gets the most flak.
It’s true in the sense that the franchisees are the scapegoats. It’s just that the biggest price driver in recent years has been the government.
Incidentally, this is a free market economy where demand determines the price.
Depending on the location of the petrol station, the franchisees report their competitors’ prices to head office several times a day, and there a decision is made based on the constantly reported sales figures as to whether to follow suit or wait a little longer. Whether prices go up or down.
Otherwise, it’s the same old calculation: I buy 10,000 litres of petrol for €1 per litre, payment is due immediately. After I’ve sold 5,000 of those, my supplier’s/franchisor’s/… petrol price rises to €2. How much do I sell the residue of my 5,000 litres for, if I have to expect that at some point I’ll have to fill my 10,000-litre tank again at 2 EUR/litre?
Philipp
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How much it costs to fill the tank shouldn’t really matter to a tenant at one of the big chains (it’s different with the independent ones), as they get around 2 cents from every litre sold, regardless of the fuel price. It only becomes a problem when sales slump, but a tenant can’t really make a living from fuel sales anyway; the money comes from the shop.
Right, that was very off-topic, but then so are some other things in this forum
Alex
Gast
Well, he did get the maths right. He just forgot to think it through.
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It was always like that at school. Maths is easy, but the word problems....... :ph34r:
Although Franz is usually quite reliable with his maths.
Regards
Martin
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Franz has just found something to grumble about again, and these days he seems to enjoy grumbling about FOTOIMPEX and Mirko almost more than he did about his previous ‘favourite’ from Stapelfeld.
The quantity is simply many times greater than the quality of his posts.
Alexander
Renate
Hello,
As things stand, the price of silver is unlikely to fall any further; if anything, it’s likely to rise. This time, speculators aren’t to blame. The culprit, strange as it may sound, is the boom in digital photography. Silver is essential not only in analogue cameras, but in digital ones too.
Well, I admit I may have exaggerated a little. Digital cameras aren’t solely to blame for the higher price of silver, but they are partly responsible. The electronics industry will need more silver in the near future than in the past. Until now, components were soldered using solder containing around 40% lead. This has since been banned in Europe for environmental reasons. The lead was used to lower the melting point of the tin. Alternatively, a few per cent of silver is now added to the tin to lower the melting point. Depending on the soldering system, this can be as much as 5% silver. Since the end of March, lead may no longer be used. However, electronics companies switched over some time ago, and this caused the price of silver to skyrocket. A boom in the electronics industry is now helping to determine the price of analogue photography.
I see the slightly higher film price as an indirect contribution to environmental protection, as the lead contained in tonnes of electronic waste was and remains a major problem.
Best regards
Renate
Kiste
Well,
I’ll start collecting old digital cameras too
and chuck them in Ditionit
:lol:
"That’s true in the sense that the little guys are the scapegoats. It’s just that the biggest driver of prices in recent years has been the government.”
I didn’t realise
that fuel taxes (which are taxed multiple times :ph34r: )
had gone up so much before Easter?
Regards, Stephan
Petzi
Hello,
As things stand, the price of silver is unlikely to fall any further; in fact, it’s more likely to rise. This time, speculators aren’t to blame. The culprit, though it may sound paradoxical, is the boom in digital photography. Silver is essential not only in analogue cameras, but in digital ones too.
Well, I admit I may have exaggerated a little. Digital cameras aren’t solely to blame for the higher price of silver, but they are partly responsible. The electronics industry will need more silver in the near future than in the past. Until now, components were soldered using solder containing around 40% lead. This has since been banned in Europe for environmental reasons. The lead was used to lower the melting point of the tin. Alternatively, a few per cent of silver is now added to the tin to lower the melting point. Depending on the soldering system, this can be as much as 5% silver. Since the end of March, lead may no longer be used. However, electronics companies switched over some time ago, and this caused the price of silver to soar. A boom in the electronics industry is now helping to determine the price of analogue photography.
I see the slightly higher film price as an indirect contribution to environmental protection, as the lead contained in tonnes of electronic waste was and remains a major problem.
[right][post="7509"]<{POST_SNAPBACK}>[/post][/right]
Yes, that is certainly an important point. Although I don’t quite see the point of avoiding lead in solder, as electronic waste is no longer allowed to be disposed of with household rubbish, and the metals it contains are recycled. In that case, it is surely less important whether lead is present or not, as it is extracted anyway. I would even go so far as to suggest that metals with a low melting point are easier to recycle.
Incidentally, recycling electronic waste also yields metals that can be reused. This in turn means less silver is needed from mines...
Timur
Hi Mirko,
You say, "Foma, for example, has raised all its prices by 6% across the board."
By what percentage will ADOX be raising its prices?
Do you have any more specific information on that?
Thanks
