Two years ago 25 sheets of Ilford Delta 100 4x5 B&W cost just over $25. My last purchase last fall it was ~$35. Now it's $46. That's a steep rise! What's driving these rising film prices and can we expect them to drop again some day?
Answer
Here’s Fuji’s annual report: https://www.fujifilmholdings.com/en/pdf/investors/integrated_report/ff_ir_2018_all.pdf
The page you want is page 48.
What you should notice is that photo imaging made up 15.7% of the business - to which photo imaging revenues were roughly 2/3. While imagine revenues have shown increases from 2014, they also appear to be plateauing from 2016 on.
Fuji directly credits emerging markets, instax, and printing for the growth - not provia, velvia, or astia. In case you missed the news, they’re retiring all B&W (https://petapixel.com/2018/04/06/fujifilm-officially-killing-off-acros-film/) [damn, I miss me some neopan 1600 about now].
Ilford is held by a private equities firm, so, there is no public data on their sales.
But, I would guess that Harman Tech was able to make it profitable, then it was acquired, and it’s positive profitability is why it still exists. They probably also declined in sales to the same plateau. The film resurgeance has been strongest with instant, followed by 135. 120 and larger are essentially being subsidized by these sales.
Prices will continue to climb until it makes more sense to nix the product altogether. Maybe they’ll still manufacture the plastic for us so we can make and coat our own large format emulsions in the future.
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