PAL Papers

[Mark Layne]

Does anyone know who the manufacturer of the PALPRINT and PALBROM papers was. They were around a decade or so ago.

[ChuckP]

Not sure of the real manufacturer. An old paper package says "Made in Yugoslavia under authority of PAL CHEMICAL CORP, West Germany". A pretty good paper. I believe that Bruce Barnbaum used to use it for some things.

[rjr]

Does anyone know who the manufacturer of the PALPRINT and PALBROM papers was. They were around a decade or so ago.

As much as I know, PAL is gone - I never used their products myself but read about them in a stack of old magazines dating to 1990 to 1995, the mag "Foto Hobby Labor" vanished some months later. :-(

PAL was located in Frankfurt/Main and only a distributor - their chemistry was from Amaloco of the Netherlands, some papers from Yugoslavia as stated before by Chuck - that makes Efke/Fotokemika to their source.

PAL disappeared at that time, mid 1990s, I have no idea what happened to them. They sure don´t exist anymore (as do others, like Argenta, a Munich paper makers who went bust because the price for the real estate was more profitable than a continued production).

Amaloco continues to buy bulk Efke paper and cut it under their label. I have no personal experience with the papers than reading of occasional emulsion flaws and miscuts and a very limited stocking quality with their variable contrast paper - as any paper with emulsion-incorporated developers agents, they get very soft in time.

[Mark Layne]

I used these for some time after a workshop I took with Bruce. Palprint toned to brown in selenium rapidly.

[Stane Kočar]

Pal papers were made by Fotokemika, Croatia before 1990 for the export. I think it was variant (if not the same as) of EFKE EFKEBROM and EMAKS papers.
I still have a few packages of 5 and 10 sheets. I remember a report in an american magazine that times which highly praise those two papers (especially PalPRINT) so I run in the shop and buy all packages they have had.

[Max Power]

Pal papers were made by Fotokemika, Croatia before 1990 for the export. I think it was variant (if not the same as) of EFKE EFKEBROM and EMAKS papers.
I still have a few packages of 5 and 10 sheets. I remember a report in an american magazine that times which highly praise those two papers (especially PalPRINT) so I run in the shop and buy all packages they have had.

Pure speculation, but it's possible that if the production was done in Croatia, prior to the civil war in the FRY, the plant was shut down when things got hot. When things calmed down a bit, a business decision to not restart production was possibly made...
Just speculation though.

Kent

[rjr]

Kent,

NO! :-)

Fotokemika is still making photographic papers... they moved in 2000 from Zagreb to a nearby smaller town nearby, Samobor... still Croatia.

Just PAL -a german company putting their stickers on the boxes- is bust! If anyone cares, I´ll ask someone who should know what happened to them - he is selling the Amaloco and Dilu chemistry they used to handle.