Hello everyone,
I’ve only just seen this. There’s an official statement on the ADOX website.
I’d be happy to elaborate on this here as well.
The key factors are: productivity and price.
Photographic papers have hardly become any more expensive compared to films in recent years, as both manufacturers have significant overcapacity and the output market is in decline overall. The momentum we’ve seen in recent years relates predominantly to colour film, which is bought by a younger demographic, snapped and then immediately digitised.
This helps Kodak and provides work for the labs, but not for photographic paper.
We at ADOX have the smallest operational factory capable, in theory, of manufacturing film and photographic paper in almost all formats ourselves.
In practice, however, we do not yet utilise all production facilities. Some aspects are still in the scale-up phase, whilst in other areas we are still collaborating with suppliers. Experience shows that these partnerships eventually come to an end, and in the recent past, many have ground to a halt due to takeovers, insolvencies or both (e.g. Tetenal).
This immediately presents us with immense technical challenges, and the existing team must try to implement replacement production as quickly as possible. As we have only limited resources and staff, we have to set priorities.
Unfortunately, the photographic paper is caught in a bind. On the one hand, it is far too cheap in terms of price relative to the cost of production, and on the other hand, our smallest photo factory in the world (if you disregard Filmferrania) is simply not built to produce large quantities cheaply.
When we started with Polywarmton, we still had partners who would have done the casting for us. In the meantime, these partnerships have broken down.
We can produce the paper on the Swiss machine and already have various test rolls here (with all sorts of flaws), but when we added everything up, we came to the conclusion that the costs up to the finished product and energy consumption exceed the raw material value.
So what is the current situation exactly?
Polywarmton: We can produce the emulsions reliably (see liquid emulsion). We’ve also got the various casting issues under control now.
It’s now just a matter of productivity. There’s still room for improvement there through better organisation. So, if we start with film casting and achieve a basic machine utilisation there, we might be able to run some Polywarmton alongside it and offer it at roughly the same price as Ilford Warmtone.
MCC: A change in raw materials has meant that the emulsions are no longer coming out properly. At present, we can only produce a variant that reaches a maximum gradient of 3. For anything else, we need R&D capacity. As long as we are working on the film project (much higher productivity than paper), this is not available.
Is it a lost cause? No. When will it be available? I’m not committing to a date. But it’s not out of the question that there might be a small batch of Polywarmton next year.
Is anyone interested in MCC with a maximum gradation of 3? There should still be a roll left over from the last test production.
Best regards,
Mirko
