Eastman Kodak

Commercial printer equipment installations and other news from Printing Impressions’ September 2012 edition, featuring FolgerGraphics and Philipp Lithographing.

ROCHESTER, NY—Eastman Kodak plans to sell its document imaging and personalized imaging businesses in order to focus on printing and business services. The sale of these units, combined with cost-cutting initiatives and the auctioning of its patent portfolio, will help it emerge from Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection sometime in 2013.

Kodak outlined its next steps toward emergence from Chapter 11 reorganization as a company primarily focused on commercial, packaging and functional printing solutions and enterprise services.The company has initiated sale processes for its Personalized Imaging and Document Imaging businesses.

Eastman Kodak Co. has been shrinking for years. But the struggling Rochester icon is looking to 2013 to finally reverse that trend and become, once again, a growing company. The printing and imaging company on Monday filed a post-bankruptcy business plan and financial projections that show top-line revenue dropping to a low point this year and then growing in 2013 and thereafter.

As the company filed the business turnaround plan, it also announced an extension of the deadline for naming a winning bidder in the auction of 1,100 digital imaging patents.

Kodak had been working under a 5 p.m. Monday deadline

ColorDynamics, a Dallas-based commercial printer, has purchased a Kodak Prosper S10 imprinting system to significantly decrease the turnaround time required to apply addresses for a national retailer’s western U.S. direct mail program. The system can be used on either its Harris M1000 eight-color commercial web press or a Harris M300 six-color commercial web press.

Kodak's top executives could be in line for big bonuses if creditors get some payback and if the company successfully emerges from bankruptcy or gets acquired. The printing and imaging company on Wednesday filed a motion in U.S. Bankruptcy Court seeking approval for as much as $17.6 million in bonuses for 15 executives.

Such bonus programs are common in Chapter 11 cases of publicly held companies, said Robert Rock, senior bankruptcy attorney with Albany-based law firm Tully Rinckey.

“The concept is that these bonuses are given to key executives in order to keep them with the reorganizing company at a time when

(Chairman and CEO Antonio) Perez explained the current management structure was right for when the company focused on stabilizing its businesses and strategy development. “But now we…need to focus our top leaders on our key tasks, personal accountability and accomplishing our plan. We must also continue to reduce the company's cost structure by identifying opportunities to flatten the organization.”
 
The company is organizing its business lines into three operating groups: Digital Printing and Enterprise Group, led by Kodak president Philip Faraci; Graphics, Entertainment and Commercial Films Group, led by Brad Kruchten, senior vice president; and Consumer Group, which is to be

ROCHESTER, NY—Eastman Kodak obtained approval from the bankruptcy court to conduct an auction to sell its digital capture and Kodak Imaging Systems and Services (KISS) patent portfolios.

Kodak’s motion was contested by Apple and FlashPoint Technologies, which have asserted “ownership” interests in a small number of the 1,100 patents. The court found that all of the digital capture and imaging patents are the property of Kodak’s estate.

Kodak has teamed up with EFI to develop connectivity between Kodak Prinergy workflow and EFI Fiery digital print servers, providing print service providers with a fully-integrated solution that allows them to manage jobs for multiple offset and digital devices from a single user interface. Using a centralized workflow in an offset and digital blended production environment drives higher levels of automation and increased job control, both of which are key to delivering profitable print across different job sizes and run lengths.