Company type | Limited |
---|---|
Industry | Photography, Digital imaging |
Founded | 30 May 2013 [1] |
Headquarters | Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire, United Kingdom |
Key people | Paul Wells, CEO [2] |
Products | film, digital imaging software and hardware |
Owner | Kingswood Capital Management |
Website | www |
Kodak Alaris is a British-based company currently comprising two divisions: Alaris, hardware and software for digital imaging and information management; and Kodak Moments, retail photo printing kiosks and sales and marketing of traditional photographic film. The company is headquartered in Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire. [3] [4] The company shares ownership of the Kodak brand with the Eastman Kodak Company (usually known simply as Kodak). [5]
In 2012, Kodak filed for bankruptcy after a years-long decline in the company's core film photography business. [6] As part of the bankruptcy, Kodak faced a $2.8 billion claim by the UK Kodak Pension Plan (KPP). The claim was resolved and Kodak Alaris was formed when KPP paid $325 million for Kodak's personalized imaging and document imaging businesses. [7] [8] [9] [10] [4]
In 2014, the company appointed Ralf Gerbershagen as CEO. [11] Also in 2014, Mark Elliott was named chairman of the Board of Kodak Alaris. [12]
In 2015, the company created AI Foundry, which provides business process automation solutions that use artificial intelligence (AI) and imaging science to automate data capture workflows. [13]
In 2016, the company launched Kodak Moments, a visual storytelling app, at the South by Southwest festival. [14] The company closed its only colour paper factory in Harrow, UK and outsourced all RA-4 paper production to Carestream Health, US formerly the Eastman Kodak health group, with production at a facility in Windsor, Colorado. [15]
In 2017, the company appointed Marc Jourlait as CEO, completed a balance sheet restructuring, renewed a rotating credit facility, and completed the sale of its manufacturing facility, Kodak Works in Harrow. [5]
In 2018, the company's Information Management division announced that it would begin to operate under the name Alaris. [16]
In 2020, the Paper, Photochemicals, Display, and Software business was sold to Sino Promise, China which was also a major distributor for Kodak Alaris. This includes Kodak color negative paper, photochemicals (Color process photochemicals for photolabs and B&W retail photo processing chemicals), display substrates (Duratrans, etc.) and printing software businesses. Sino Promise had previously purchased some of the manufacturing assets of Kodak Alaris (formerly Kodak China) and so was already the manufacturer of the color process chemicals and undertook paper finishing. [17] The AI foundry business was also sold to US mortgage company Guaranteed Rate. [18]
On 18 November 2020, Kodak Alaris was formally transferred from KPP to the Board of the Pension Protection Fund (PPF). Thus the ownership of the company came directly under the control of the UK pension protection authority. [1] On 1 April 2022 Paul Wells succeeded Mark Alflatt as CEO. [19]
On 1 August 2024 Kodak Alaris was sold by the UK PPF to Kingswood capital management, a Los Angeles-based private equity firm. [20]
The company is currently organised into two divisions; Alaris and Kodak Moments.
Alaris is focussed on business information capture and management. It had revenues of $196m in 2022 and directly employed 700 staff. [1]
The Kodak Moments business supplies retail self service print kiosks, which enable consumers to make prints of digital images and photo products such as printed mugs, and undertakes the sales and marketing of Kodak still films produced by Eastman Kodak, Rochester, US. The kiosk machines are sourced from original manufacturers and assembled for Kodak Alaris by third party integrators located in US and Germany. Machine consumables are manufactured by a Kodak Alaris facility in the US and a third party supplier in Germany. It had revenues of $314m in 2022 and directly employed 480 staff. [1]
Kodak Alaris has the rights to the sale, marketing and distribution of Kodak-branded still film products. Film is produced in 35mm, 120, and sheet film formats. Interest in film photography increased in the second decade of the 2000s, causing a shortage of film worldwide. [21] Manufacturer Eastman Kodak's main business continues to be the production of movie and industrial films, where it retains control over the sales and distribution. However, due to shortage of still films, movie films have also been made available to still film consumers by third parties such as Flic Film. [22]
Black-and-white negative film
Color negative film
Color reversal (slide) film
In 2018, Kodak launched a newly formulated version of Kodak Ektachrome 100 color reversal film in 35mm format. [23] The following year, the company announced the film stock in 120 and 4x5 film formats. [24]
The Eastman Kodak Company, referred to simply as Kodak, is an American public company that produces various products related to its historic basis in film photography. The company is headquartered in Rochester, New York, and is incorporated in New Jersey. It is best known for photographic film products, which it brought to a mass market for the first time.
George Eastman was an American entrepreneur who founded the Eastman Kodak Company and helped to bring the photographic use of roll film into the mainstream. After a decade of experiments in photography, he patented and sold a roll film camera, making amateur photography accessible to the general public for the first time. Working as the treasurer and later president of Kodak, he oversaw the expansion of the company and the film industry.
Kodachrome is the brand name for a color reversal film introduced by Eastman Kodak in 1935. It was one of the first successful color materials and was used for both cinematography and still photography. For many years, Kodachrome was widely used for professional color photography, especially for images intended for publication in print media.
In photography, reversal film or slide film is a type of photographic film that produces a positive image on a transparent base. Instead of negatives and prints, reversal film is processed to produce transparencies or diapositives. Reversal film is produced in various sizes, from 35 mm to roll film to 8×10 inch sheet film.
The E-6 process is a chromogenic photographic process for developing Ektachrome, Fujichrome and other color reversal photographic film.
In infrared photography, the photographic film or image sensor used is sensitive to infrared light. The part of the spectrum used is referred to as near-infrared to distinguish it from far-infrared, which is the domain of thermal imaging. Wavelengths used for photography range from about 700 nm to about 900 nm. Film is usually sensitive to visible light too, so an infrared-passing filter is used; this lets infrared (IR) light pass through to the camera, but blocks all or most of the visible light spectrum; these filters thus look black (opaque) or deep red.
Ektachrome is a brand name owned by Kodak for a range of transparency, still and motion picture films previously available in many formats, including 35 mm and sheet sizes to 11 × 14 inch size. Ektachrome has a distinctive look that became familiar to many readers of National Geographic, which used it extensively for color photographs for decades in settings where Kodachrome was too slow. In terms of reciprocity characteristics, Ektachrome is stable at shutter speeds between ten seconds and 1/10,000 of a second.
The E-4 process is a now outdated process for developing color reversal (transparency) photographic film, which was introduced in 1966.
Infrared cleaning is a technique used by some film scanners and flatbed scanners to reduce or remove the effect of dust and scratches upon the finished scan. It works by collecting an additional infrared channel from the scan at the same position and resolution as the three visible color channels. The infrared channel, in combination with the other channels, is used to detect the location of scratches and dust. Once located, those defects can be corrected by scaling or replaced by inpainting.
The E-2 process and E-3 process are outdated processes for developing Ektachrome reversal photographic film. The two processes are very similar, and differ depending on the film. Kodak sold kits that could process either kind of film.
Analog photography, also known as film photography, is a term usually applied to photography that uses chemical processes to capture an image, typically on paper, film or a hard plate. These processes were the only methods available to photographers for more than a century prior to the invention of digital photography, which uses electronic sensors to record images to digital media. Analog electronic photography was sometimes used in the late 20th century but soon died out.
Eastman Business Park, formerly Kodak Park, is a large manufacturing and industrial complex in the city of Rochester, New York, in the United States. The complex is run by Eastman Kodak and is located 3 miles (5 km) north of downtown Rochester and 4 miles (6 km) south of Lake Ontario. The complex runs parallel to New York State Route 104 and Mount Read Boulevard for most of its length. Also part of the complex is the Kodak Center performing arts center and conference facility.
Antonio Manuel Pérez is a businessman from Spain, former CEO of Eastman Kodak Company, based in Rochester, New York, in the United States.
Kodak Professional T-MAX Film is a continuous tone, panchromatic, tabular-grain black and white negative film originally developed and manufactured by Eastman Kodak since 1986. It is still manufactured by Eastman Kodak but distributed and marketed by Kodak Alaris, as with other products under Kodak Professional banner.
The Kodak Digital Camera System is a series of digital single-lens reflex cameras and digital camera backs that were released by Kodak in the 1990s and 2000s, and discontinued in 2005. They are all based on existing 35mm film SLRs from Nikon, Canon and Sigma. The range includes the original Kodak DCS, the first commercially available digital SLR.
Kodak Portra is a family of daylight-balanced professional color negative films originally introduced in 1998 made mainly for portrait and wedding applications. They are successors of the professional Vericolor films, which succeeded Ektacolor films earlier. The films are available in three speeds — 160, 400, and 800 ISO — with the 160 and 400 speed formerly available as "natural color" (NC) and "vivid color" (VC) varieties before the 2011 update.
Photographic film is a strip or sheet of transparent film base coated on one side with a gelatin emulsion containing microscopically small light-sensitive silver halide crystals. The sizes and other characteristics of the crystals determine the sensitivity, contrast, and resolution of the film. Film is typically segmented in frames, that give rise to separate photographs.
The Kodak Works, Harrow was a photographic manufacturing plant and research and development centre on Headstone Drive, Harrow, North West London. Built by the American Kodak company in 1890, it was their largest factory in the United Kingdom and at its peak in the mid-20th century employed up to 6,000 workers. Production of photographic film ended in 2005 and the plant closed its doors in 2016.