Ilford Imaging is possibly finished
Posted: Sat Dec 07, 2013 9:17 pm
Swiss company Ilford Imaging, one of the last 2 direct corporate descendents of the Ilford photographic materials company with over a century of history, may be done for. They have experienced financial troubles a-plenty over the past years, most recently with corporate take-overs, sell-offs and failed turn-arounds as they continued to produce things such as their popular line of digital inkjet media. Including my favorite go-to paper, Ilford Gold Fibre Silk. (Which has been giving me fits with feed jams over the last year. Coincidence?)
It's being reported over the past few days that Ilford Imaging has hit a financial brick wall after several "last minute" deals since the summer of this year have ultimately all fallen through. The company may be now completely insolvent and essentially has informed a receivership court that it can't continue to operate. It's being cut off by suppliers unless all materials ordered are pre-payed (common in this kind of situation), and may have stopped paying employees essential to operations. The company already was in receivership since earlier this year, and attempting to find new investors or a buyer to back its latest turn-around plan. Apparently some 20 potential investors all turned the opportunity down, the last one withdrawing in late November. It may be up to the court or an appointed receiver to now decide the disposition of whatever remains.
This is a shame, but shows that the upheaval of the photographic world fostered by digital is still continuing to play out, taking more victims of once dominant industry players. If you like Ilford Gold Fibre Silk or any of their other inkjet media a lot, you might want to obtain whatever stocks of it you can...
Check the following link for a longer story on this; use Google to translate it if you don't read German.
http://www.nzz.ch/wirtschaft/equity/fot ... 1.18198470
And here's a couple of shorter related reports in English:
http://www.amateurphotographer.co.uk/ph ... insolvency
http://www.imaging-resource.com/news/20 ... witzerland
It's being reported over the past few days that Ilford Imaging has hit a financial brick wall after several "last minute" deals since the summer of this year have ultimately all fallen through. The company may be now completely insolvent and essentially has informed a receivership court that it can't continue to operate. It's being cut off by suppliers unless all materials ordered are pre-payed (common in this kind of situation), and may have stopped paying employees essential to operations. The company already was in receivership since earlier this year, and attempting to find new investors or a buyer to back its latest turn-around plan. Apparently some 20 potential investors all turned the opportunity down, the last one withdrawing in late November. It may be up to the court or an appointed receiver to now decide the disposition of whatever remains.
This is a shame, but shows that the upheaval of the photographic world fostered by digital is still continuing to play out, taking more victims of once dominant industry players. If you like Ilford Gold Fibre Silk or any of their other inkjet media a lot, you might want to obtain whatever stocks of it you can...
Check the following link for a longer story on this; use Google to translate it if you don't read German.
http://www.nzz.ch/wirtschaft/equity/fot ... 1.18198470
And here's a couple of shorter related reports in English:
http://www.amateurphotographer.co.uk/ph ... insolvency
http://www.imaging-resource.com/news/20 ... witzerland