So long Ilford?

[ellis_vener_photography]

According to this story in the Manchester Guardian

 

http://www.manchesteronline.co.uk/business/general/s/128/

128120_fears_for_700_jobs_as_ilford_faces_closure.html

 

if you like

Ilford films and papers you had beter consider stocking up.

[al_divenuti]

Link didn't work. Can you re-post?

[Spearhead]

<a href="http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=009GBN">link</a>

[jon_porter1]

Sounds a little early to be crying Chicken Little.

[al_divenuti]

Well...I've been trying to tell people that Ilford is owned by a VC-firm with Gordon Gecko tedencies, but apparently folks were continuing to believe the management was the lamb washed clean and pure. No "I told you so's" though, because this isn't good news for anybody.

 

But...

 

I still think there's a fair chance a buyer might be found for Ilford. Don't shovel dirt on them quite yet. At the very least somebody could countinue to manufacture their products under license.

[dk_thompson]

well anyone who owned one of their processing machines shouldn't be overly surprised....still, not very good news. it'll give me something to think about when (if) we negotiate another annual contract with serco. it's at times like these...almost wish we'd bought a kreonite.

[reuben_c]

<i>Sounds a little early to be crying Chicken Little.</i>

<p>

Oh, I dunno.

<p>

Going into receivership isn't <I>that</I> far removed from firing up the virtual plucking machine, is it?

[scott_esposito]

Jeez. I thought Ilford was supposed to be the one that would stick with film through thick and thin while Kodak whored itself out to digital. Guess not.

[andre_noble4]

I know it's selfish to put it this way, but better they discontinued 740 workers than discontinue Ilfochrome Classic Deluxe itself.

[jim_causey]

I really hope that Ilford survives. I'm moving to digital for color work, but I'm just now falling back in love with traditional black-and-white processes, and I never dreamed that those materials would be dying off so quickly.

[tom_oldfield1]

Received this tonight...

 

Digital revolution threatens Ilford jobs

 

Terry Macalister

Tuesday August 24, 2004

 

The Guardian

The British arm of Ilford, one of the most famous names in black-and-white photography, has been forced into administration.

 

Over 740 jobs at the company's huge plant in Cheshire are in danger following a slump in demand in favour of digital and colour equipment.

 

The company was formed 125 years ago by Alfred Harman making gelatine dry plates in the basement of his house in Ilford, Essex.

 

In recent years it has been through a variety of owners, and is controlled by private equity firm, Doughty Hanson.

 

Ilford Imaging has two manufacturing companies - one at Mobberley in Cheshire and the other at Marly in Switzerland.

 

The Swiss operation - a legacy of when Ilford was owned by Ciba Geigy - develops and manufactures digital inkjet products. It is not affected by any form of insolvency and is trading normally. A further 310 Ilford staff are employed in marketing and distribution businesses in America, Europe and Australia.

 

The US has traditionally been the biggest market for the monochrome films and developing paper produced by Ilford in Britain.

 

Mark Byers, one of the partners from Grant Thornton appointed as a joint administrator, said the next step would be to try to restructure Ilford in the hope it could be made viable for sale. He said it was "not inevitable" that this would involve job losses but admitted cuts were possible as costs would have to be taken out of the business.

 

Mr Byers said the pension situation appeared positive for the staff with no signs of deficits.

 

"It's important [for the employees] not to get spooked. Our understanding is that these defined-benefit schemes are fine," he said yesterday.

 

Ilford has spent the past four years trying to adjust to falling sales of black-and-white equipment.

 

The company claims to hold 60% of the global market but overall volumes have been falling and were down 18% last year.

 

Mr Byers said the figures for the first seven months of 2004 showed the overall market shrinking by 26%. "This left the [ilford] operation badly exposed," he said.

 

Despite this, Ilford, which reports in dollars, has managed to increase overall sales volumes to $233m for the 12 months to December 2003.

 

Doughty Hanson - recently involved in the float of the Umbro sports clothing business - is understood to have tried to sell Ilford quite recently but failed to find a buyer. The private equity firm was unavailable for comment.

 

The fate of the Ilford operation was not recorded on the company website, which boasted only of its long and successful history. "The efficiency of our plants in the UK and Switzerland - and the award-winning products they constantly develop are the envy of the industry," it said.

 

Despite the problems, Mr Byers insists the Ilford name is a significant brand, with a particular following among professional and keen amateur photographers who prefer the artistry of monochrome pictures.

 

Ironically the Ilford business is threatened just weeks after the death of Henri Cartier Bresson, a key exponent of black-and-white photography.

 

Guardian Unlimited ? Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

[patrick_ingram]

Perhaps even more alarming is the widespread misunderstanding of the

concept

of irony in the news media (re: the previous post). :) I'd miss

HP5+ if Ilford went under (and no-one bought it up), but maybe it's

not the end of the world if the bigs guys get out of film and the

smaller companies pick up the slack.

[vatovec]

Maybe it is not a big deal, but here where i live no one of the pro photographic shops ever heard of Bergger and thought Efke has been out of business for 20 years now. Guess i`ll go out shoot some HP5+ today and try to find something appropriate to replace it.

Oh and i must file for a credit card with my bank, since it seems that my future purchases will be made via internet shops,...

[chris_waller]

I hope that Ilford finds a buyer. There is a viable business there and if they can just hang on until Kodak and Agfa have shrunk/withdrawn then they will be in a much stronger position. This may explain Ilford's seemingly strange behaviour of late and I suspected a plague of cost-accountants. It's sad that a cmpany who used to be genuinely interested in photography have been laid low by 'business consultants' - like so much else in Britain.

[kei n.]

Ouch. Love their silver films and paper. Better get back to learning more digital...

[gaius1]

<a href="http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsArticle.jhtml?type=businessNews&storyID=6056133&src=UK_DskTopTkr/GetContent&section=finance">Reuters article</a>

[rustys pics]

From the Guardian article: "One worker said:?The rumour last week was we were going to

be bought by a German firm. We?ve been told nothing definite yet, it?s a case of wait and

see.?

 

Could that buyer be Maaco? It makes sense and they might be able to raise the capital. If

that happens it would be great for Ilford and the photo community. I suppose that buyer

could even be AGFA, though it's unlikely all of Ilford's chemicals would be picked up. I

could care less about Delta films, but let's hope HP-5, FP-4 and the Mulitgrade papers

survive.

[al_divenuti]

Dunno about Maco. Isn't their stuff just contract manufactured by Efke, anyways? Hard to imagine an entity from any of the E. European countries absorbing the debt given exchange rates.

 

And let's be honsest - cessation of Ilford's B&W product line is a comforting thought to Forte, Efke, Foma, et. al., because it just means a bigger slice of a diminishing pie for them all.

 

Another VC is still the most likely choice for a buyer, I think. All others are long shots.

[fernando_mcsoto]

Reading the article in Reuters I'm amazed that Doughty, the owner of Ilford, provisioned and wrote off the acquisition of Ilford in 1999 and 2000 (only two years after the operation). I always thought that real digital explosion came in 2002 when consumers stared buying digital point and shoots cameras like crazy. Were they thinking already that Ilford had no future in 1999?

 

 

Anyway, I hope they sell their patents and licences to someone in China or Croatia who will be able to manufacture them at low cost, because I use their products everyday. The UK is a too expensive country for manufacturing. Because of the succesful services industry we are the second richest country in the EU and accordingly our costs are massive. Besides interest rates are rocketing and we have a too high Sterling Pound in relation to Euro and Dollar. Everybody is going East for manufacturing. Very bad for a mainly manufacturing country like Scotland...

[al_divenuti]

My guess (and it's only that) is that Ilford got bought by Doughty, etc. in late '97 because Int'l Paper had just dumped a ton of money into their production infrastructure giving them healthy depreciation for cash flow.

 

Remember - International Paper was looking to sell Ilford in a panic back in late '97 when the Asis Crisis started rearing its head...I think they were grateful Doughty came with cash in hand.

 

Frankly, I don't know how Doughty wrote them off so quickly. Perhaps the used the write-off to fund the digital products foray? And I found it interesting that one of the articles mentioned that division was prospering because I know of several large retailers in the Boston, MA and Washington, D.C. area who don't carry the inkjet papers any more because they simply couldn't give them away. The little I knew of the digital division suggested it was all based on licensed, rather than in-house technology.

 

Wouldn't be surprised if someone like John Hicks didn't know the true story about how Ilford got themselves in such a bind and how things stand with the digital line...Wonder where he's at?

 

Also - if you think labor costs are high in the UK, they PALE to the costs in CH, which has the highest standard of living in the world. And that includes benefits costs.

[chris_waller]

I wouldn't be surprised if Ilford were bought by a German company. The Germans have bought a lot of our companies, e.g. our car industry, and then made a better job of running them with increased investment and better management. When Ilford was run by people who were interested in photography it was a great comapny. Sadly it fell into the hands of business consultants, MBAs and accountants.

[david_carper]

Thanks to all for the support. Here is a link to an official release from ILFORD:

 

http://www.ilford.com/html/us_english/ILFOPRO/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=6126

 

Regards,

 

David Carper

 

ILFORD Technical Service

[gareth_harper]

David, Thanks for the post. I really do hope all the UK jobs can be kept. I use a lot of Ilford products and hope I can continue to do so. Fingers crossed something is worked out for all the employees.

[michael_pye]

I've only just found about this today.I thought Ilford were safe really because they make excellent inkjet paper as well.So I thought the company as a whole would keep going.

 

There products are some of the best in the world.I doubt all that would go up in smoke.There are to many people still into the traditional method.

 

I know this sounds terrible,but I was surprized to hear they employed so many people in this day and age of automation for a product that really has been specialist since colour kicked in years ago.

 

I'm sure they live to see another day.I would be lost with out my ID11 and Delta film! Though if they want to improve their Muligrade that would be nice!

[niall_church]

I wonder if Fuji would be interested!

Anyway, I bought a 500ml bottle of multigrade developer

and discovered that it was two and a have years old,

so the suppliers here in my country replaced it with

two one Litre bottles,Yippeeee!

Hope they keep going!

Niall