Konica, the only other color film maker in the world has decided to call it quits....here is a small blurb from their press release. Although they were not a player in LF, its another film plant shutting down which is painful, as who knows how these assets could be used one day for LF. As some posters pointed on other threads, its hard to make film profitable in low volume. These companies consider $10+ million sales low volume.....
In today’s shrinking photographic market represented by color film and color paper, we have been considering to scale back and to continue photo business at an appropriate size; however, when we foresee the photographic market, it is quite difficult to maintain profitability in this field, and we have decided to withdraw from photo business. As schemed below, we will, as much as possible, avoid causing any inconvenience in providing products to our worldwide customers in the course of withdrawal.
For color film and color paper, while considering our customer needs, we will step-by-step reduce product lineup and cease our film and color paper production by the end of fiscal year ending March 31, 2007.
For minilab business, we will cease production of the system by the end of fiscal year ending March 31, 2006; however we will have such company as Noritsu Koki to provide maintenance and customer services so as not to cause any inconvenience to our customers.
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