[ADOX Fotoimpex]

Ian,

if you develop Polywarmtone and MCC both in ADOTOL/Neutol NE I agree with you, they come out quite similar and one could substitute the two.

The reason why we don´t plan to do it, apart from the "small" technical discussion we would have to undertake ;-), is the marketing side.
People know MCC and people know Polywarmtone.

If you bring the customers either one of the papers back they will look at the box (or at the text in an online shop) recognize a product they know and like, decide whether they feel like buying it now and then possibly put it in the trolley. They know what they have to expect and the decision is easy.

Our MCC is, except for a few small changes which were unavoidable, identical with Agfa´s MCC and will satisfy customers expectations.

If we were to change MCC to make it more like Polywarmtone (warmer tone, smoother lithability, different toning behaviour etc.) it would have to be a different paper in the end !
The old MCC customers would be disapointed because now MCC would tone like Polywarmtone, lith like Polywarmtone, differentiate in the shaddows and highlights differently etc. People would get totaly different results, inconsistencies in their long term series and I am sure they would be disapointed and turn away from our new MCC.

The same would happen with those customers who we promised a "substitute" for Polywarmtone. They would find the new paper also to be a lot different and I can hear them sadly sigh:"this is not my polywarmtone anymore..."

As much sense as it makes from a production standpoint, I am afraid we would have to introduce this as a totaly new product without beeing able to use an existing channel.

Not to mention that, as difficult as it is to remake Polywarmtone, making those changes to MCC wouldn´t necessarily cost a lot less.
This would yet have to be evaluated.

You know about emulsion making, so you know which knobs you can turn and where it gets difficult. Both formulations are very different down to the precipitation. No one knows exactly what causes Polywarmtone to lith like it does and to respond to toners as it does. We can all make assumptions and we know what could be the reason but if you start to change one thing, everything else might change too and you end up with months and months of sample coatings to correct this again.

Best regards,

Mirko