Topic: Ilford discontinues Ilfochrome

[Bastian]

I've just read on the german APHOG Forum that Ilford is about to discontinue Ilfochrome.

Here is the official announcement:

Dear Customer,
ILFOCHROME Classic has been a flagship brand within the ILFORD range of products for well over forty years. The importance of this range is underlined by the fact that ILFORD has continued to manufacture this product even though overall demand has decreased significantly over the last few years. The reduction in volume has led to higher production costs that have been further exacerbated by the dramatic increase in the cost of silver.
Unfortunately, the combination of low demand and higher raw material and production costs has left us no alternative but to discontinue the ILFOCHROME CLASSIC materials and related P3/P3X chemistry.
The affected products are:
ILFOCHROME CLASSIC
CLEAR DISPLAY FILM – CC.F7
TRANSLUCENT DISPLAY FILM – CT.F7
DELUXE GLOSSY MEDIUM CONTRAST – CLM.1K DELUXE GLOSSY NORMAL CONTRAST – CPS.1K
We understand the importance of these products to you and your business, and therefore, if there is sufficient demand, we are proposing a final production. We would like to offer you the opportunity to make a final purchase with the following conditions:
• An official purchase order will need to be placed by 30thNovember 2011.
• Will hold the pre-ordered rolls in storage until June 2013.
• ILFORD Payments for the order can be made in monthly installments.
As indicated, ILFORD has fully absorbed the high raw material and production and unfortunately we are unable to do this for the final production. Therefore, we will need to increase our supply price to you by 30% However, this price will be held
between now and June 2013 and covers all storage and inventory costs.
We would like to thank you for your understanding with this situation and if you have any questions or need any further information, please contact
Mr. Christian Neumann (Tel: +41 26 435 7504)
We look forward to continue serving you in the future Yours sincerely
Paul Willems CEO

[LT]

Thanks Bastian.  A sad day - ilfochrome/ Cibachrome prints look amazing in the flesh.

To be clear, this is nothing to do with the company that now makes all of Ilford mono film and paper (Ilford Photo/ Harman Tech). The company that were responsible for lfochrome was  Ilford Imaging Switzerland GmbH and split from the main company in 2004. I think they mostly make inkjet papers these days.

[Flippy]

This is rather disappointing I had some slides I wanted to make prints from, but I kept putting it off.

On a tangent Kodak seems to have stopped supplying in their metallic paper (prints on which look somewhat like cibachrome prints) in boxes, which is another real shame.  You can still buy rolls, but I don't have the means to cut them down. :\

[Francois]

Somehow, it isn't surprising that they stopped doing the Ilfochrome process.
Slide film is less and less used. People don't care that the print is incredibly awesome looking. All they really want is to recognize uncle Harold on the pictures.

Commercially, advertising companies go for the cheapest, something the Ilfochrome process definitely isn't part of...

A few years back (well, more like around 20 years ago), when Ciba sold the process to Ilford, I checked the price of a print. An 8x10 lab print was going for about 40$ ... nowadays, a decent 8x12 on Crystal Archive is around 4$.