Hypothetical Kodak paper question.

[PHOTOTONE]

So, Kodak discontinued all b/w papers several years ago, both fibre-based and R/C. Now Kodak continues to make large quantities of RA-4 color paper, which is R/C. What technical problems would there be (if any) to make Polycontract IV RC, or some other late model Kodak RC paper, since they still coat color??

[Photo Engineer]

Not many problems except cost / income. Income has to be larger than cost. Before, it was very much the other way from what Perez said.

PE

[PHOTOTONE]

So you are saying that Kodak could relatively easily coat a run of (for example) Polycontrast IV RC if they felt they could turn a profit on it? I assume this only applies to RC papers, as this is the only support Kodak now coats for prints.

[Fleath]

I'm sure they don't discontinue products just to ruin our day, if they could do it profitably it'd only be good business sense to do it. I'd think they still have the technology to coat B/W paper.

[Photo Engineer]

Ok, they have to purchase (as we saw elsewhere) at least 7 rolls of 42" x 5000 feet of paper. The B&W paper and RC paper is not the same as the color paper for a variety of reasons.

Then they have to make an emulsion and test it. If good, they go ahead and pilot coat and test, if good then they make the final coat. From start to finish would be about 1 year due to testing and quality assurance for keeping, reciprocity failure, LIK and other factors. By the end they would have about 6 rolls of paper, most of it salable if all of the above passes. Now, the reason for all of these tests is that the product is out of production and needs 'startup' testing. They would treat it as a new product. I know of cases where they shut something down and then tried to restart years later or even a year later and got different results.

So, now they have 6 rolls that cost them to make and they have to sell 100% of it to make a profit. They have to box it, label it and etc to get to that point.

I'll leave it to you to estimate the cost and the price and see if you come out with suitable figures. Kodak did not.

PE

[Terrence Brennan]

What a pity; if you do the math, that works out to about 180 1000-sheet packs. If this was an "almost-for-sure," I'd lay out a deposit for one or two packs!