Peter-Vincent Schuld

Perhaps most of the young people among us can’t even remember it or they haven’t lived to see the time.
The time of film rolls, the darkrooms in which films were developed and foo’s were printed by hand.

A time of illustrious names such as Agfa, Kodak, Fuji and Ilford.

The time of “wet photography” as we photojournalists, photographers are accustomed to refer to the era today, is largely over.
Vintage enthusiasts still venture into labour-intensive development and printing.

With the rise of digital photography, companies that made film and printing paper saw their turnover drop sharply, were forced to make other products. The Belgian producer AGFA, from Mortsel near Anwerp, was involved at an early stage and that is probably one of the reasons why the company still exists. Of course, the flourishing times when rolls of film flew over the counter are long gone. AGFA had a good reputation, and her slide film AGFA CT100 was legendary among both professional and amateur photographers.

Although AGFA is no longer so active in the market of classic photography, it is active in the market of analogue and digital image capture and IT solutions.
For example, she is active in the world of medical imaging, but also in the prepress and printing industry, and they were long before the transition to the digital age.

However, that market is also under pressure. The figures for the 1st quarter of 2018 indicated that turnover decreased by 6.7% to a turnover of 549 million euros, compared to a turnover of 588 million euros in the first quarter of 2017. AGFA Healthcare (medical imaging) is performing well in contrast to the prepress division.

With its Specialty Products division, AGFA is also active in the production of high-quality and high-security identity certificates. Last year, AGFA, together with its French partner LCsys systemes, presented a production system called ABSOLUT-ID in which the photo of the ID card holder could be affixed under the security pressure of the ID document.