On Tuesday September 3rd Eastman Kodak exited chapter 11 bankruptcy, leaving behind many of its assets.
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In January 2012 Kodak filed for bankruptcy in the United States having lost majority of its market dominance to a number of different technologies. In part, a main factor of this loss was due to the late arrival on to the digital photography scene
causing consumers to choose other brands over Kodak. In addition, with the introduction of the smartphone, many stopped buying digital cameras all together.
The company did have to go through some major restructuring and downsizing in order to be able to exit bankruptcy.
Kodak sold many of its patents, assets and in addition had to downgrade to a mere 8,500 employees.
They have change their business from their traditional personal imaging aimed at the average individual to businesses and corporations. Kodak’s primary focus is now graphics and packaging of for commercial use.
As of September 3rd Kodak has cancelled its old stock and will be reorganized, a new stock will follow.
UK KPP
Many of the assets that were sold were given to the UK Kodak Pension Plan which was facing an uncertain future back in 2012. In order to relieve pension debt that had arisen due to the amount the UK Kodak had given to its parent company,
members of the UK KPP are now owners of several assets.
These assets include all personal and document imaging areas of the company such as photography paper, all souvenir photograph stands at multiple tourist locations and over 100,000 photograph kiosks worldwide.
In addition, they now have a perpetual license to the Kodak brand.
Kodak will now be renamed to Kodak Alaris and will be run by Dennis Olbrich who will control the personal imaging sector and Dolores Krutchen who will control the document imaging sector.
With the new, motivated, leadership Alaris is expected to generate more than $1.3 billion in revenue. Also, they will employ over 4,500 people worldwide.
Both Olbrich and Krutchen intend to restore the innovation that Eastman Kodak began to lack and keep up with their competitors.
This plan for the UK KPP is good news for the pension members as it was previously uncertain whether they would receive the benefits they were initially promised.
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