The Coating division is a small part of Kodak, it's paid Perez etc their Bonuses because until very recently it's been extremely profitable.
It's the other parts of the company and the corporate directors that have been the downfall.
The problem is we all think of Kodak as a film and paper manufacturer, except they ditched B&W
The biggest Joke is Kodak (wholesale) are still trying to sell Kodachrome films (in the UK) some staff have no idea what it is and that processing been withdrawn, but they still have stock (in date) on the shelf
Parts of Kodak's website still recommend using their B&W papers, that's a company that's lost focus.
I'd add another problem, Kodak materials other than consumer C41 have almost totally disappeared from many markets/countries. If you'd seen how much time (days) I spent trying to get Kodak 120 Tmax films in South America 3 years ago you'd begin to understand. All I could get was Ilford and surprisingly Foma, and odd rolls of Fuji. it's the same here in Turkey, so I've switched back to Ilford after 20+ years of using Tmax, in all formats.
That's not the film division at fault, that's Perez and his distribution model.
Ian
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