This was posted on another bulletin board by Simon Gallery who is a rep at Harman tech. AKA Ilford & Kentmere, snagged and posted in a discussion on flickr in the I Shoot Film group and then snagged again by me to post here, so there!:
Note From HARMAN technology Limited : Re Price Increases
Dear All,
ILFORD Photo prices will indeed rise ex.factory from 1st February 2011. Firstly, let me assure you prices will NOT be rising across the board by 30.00% on film and paper.
We are absolutely determined to keep our product costs as low as possible, we have not had a worldwide price increase since September 2009, although some markets have had prices altered ad interim.
The cause of this increase is not only silver, but it is by far the biggest element, we have had significant rises in base costs, fine chemicals, taxation, employment costs, transport and energies. We have worked incredibly hard to try and offset these increases by cost savings and efficiencies in the factory and by necessity reducing staff numbers in 2009. HARMAN technology Limited had not planned ANY increase in prices AT ALL during 2011.
We always monitor silver prices on a daily basis, the huge incremental rise in the last four months was not expected, we had envisaged a gradual rise, as people invested in silver and other commodities due to currency uncertainties backed by growing industrial ( not photo ) demand.
Many suppliers raised prices in 2010 ( and probably will again ) we did not, we wished to see if silver would stabilize, we also hold significant stocks of coated parent rolls and we have been using up that stock in the last 12 weeks. All product now being finished and shipped is product coated with silver at the current elevated prices and these additional costs just cannot be absorbed by HARMAN technology Limited.
Prices do vary from market to market, this is a very, very complex equation of currency, import duties, local taxes, shipping costs, local delivery costs and distributor and reseller margins, currency fluctuations are by far the biggest introducer of anomalies in pricing around the world not the prices charged ex.factory.
New prices have been notified to resellers by distributors around the world for products leaving distributors after February 1st 2011.
Price does affect the volume of goods sold, that is an absolute fact, so we have a total determination to keep ILFORD Photo products at a fair price.
Since HARMAN technology Limited was established six years ago we have
always looked at different manufacturing options and technologies to grow our business, but fundamental to our business is the monochrome product range, the photo business will remain the largest part of our business for some appreciable time. In 2011 we have NO plans to delete ANY products whatsoever from our range and following excellent field trial feedback a brand new ILFORD Paper will be launched worldwide in Q2 2011.
We thank all our customers who buy and value our products.
Simon. ILFORD Photo, HARMAN technology Limited
