At a press conference earlier this week, Antonio Perez, CEO of Rochester, N.Y.-based Kodak, explained the strategies the reorganized company will focus on as it emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. One tactic is to provide “imaging innovations for business” anchored around three key technologies: STREAM Inkjet, SQUAREspot, and Unified Workflow. These will be brought to market with a newly formed technology services group to provide “integrated customer solutions” to what Kodak sees as a hybrid marketplace. Kodak will serve the publishing, packaging and industrial markets globally with “disruptive and enabling technologies,” Perez said.
Perez said Kodak is now a different company that is “ready” with 8,500 employees and a court approved plan to generate $165 million in EBIDA in fiscal year 2013, growing to almost $500 million in 2017. He went on to say that 80% of their margins come from ongoing sales of ink, digital plates and other “annuities.” Kodak has some 12,000 digital commercial printing devices installed, 16,000 computer-to-plate systems, and 60,000 users of Prinergy workflow.
Focused on technological breakthroughs, Kodak executives stated Kodak inkjet systems will deliver almost three times the resolution, higher productivity and much lower waste than the current systems on the market. Also, version 6 of Prinergy was released last week and they have begun work on the next release.
While acknowledging significant declines in analog print publishing in the western economies, Kodak sees large opportunities for growth in the commercial sectors globally and in the rapid shift to digital printing. Kodak believes their “path forward” will give their customers the ability to customize, personalize and produce very small runs. This will generate a higher value per page for the magazine, educational book and packaging industries at lower costs, executives said.
