Kodak cuts inkjet printer business

Kodak has announced that it will cease selling its range of inkjet printers early next year.

The photography company has will bow out of the market as a result of its bankruptcy reorganisation and instead put its efforts into selling packaging, printing and other services to businesses.

However, it said it would continue to sell ink for consumer printers and said it expected to “significantly improve cash flow” in the United States in the first half of 2013.

The inkjet business has been on the decline for a good few years now with online and high street printing services offering cheap photographs taking a huge chunk of the market.

On 19th January 2012, Kodak filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Since then the company has been restructuring its operations to try and create “a lean, world-class digital imaging and materials science company”.

Making the announcement as part of its bankruptcy restructure, Antonio M. Perez, Kodak Chairman and CEO, said the company was making good progress toward emergence from its declining business and was taking significant actions to reorganise its core ongoing businesses, reduce costs, sell assets, and streamline its organisational structure.

He said that steps such as the sale of Personalised Imaging and Document Imaging, and the Consumer Inkjet decision, would “substantially advance the transformation of [the] business to focus on commercial, packaging and functional printing solutions and enterprise services.

“As we complete the other key objectives of our restructuring in the weeks ahead, we will be well positioned to emerge successfully in 2013,” he added.

Since January Kodak has laid off over 2,700 employees and aims to reduce its headcount by about a thousand more.

Its digital camera business also became a casualty of its crisis, closing its doors in February. In August, Kodak also announced that it was selling its consumer film business.