Kodak spin-off launches digital print operation

Kodak Alaris Inc, a spin-off of the US photography pioneer Eastman Kodak Co, officially kicked off its China operations on Thursday with the announcement of a new subsidiary in China which the Kodak offshoot identifies as a key growth engine for its digital printing push.

The new subsidiary, Kodak Alaris Trading (Shanghai) Co, started operations at the beginning of July and aims to base its growth in the Chinese market on the revitalization of a century-old brand, Ralf Gerbershagen, chief executive of Kodak Alaris, said at a news briefing in Beijing on Thursday.

Created in September 2013 as part of Eastman Kodak's efforts to emerge from bankruptcy, Kodak Alaris, the document and personalized imaging business spun off from Kodak and currently controlled by the UK-based Kodak Pension Plan, has a tough task ahead of it in adapting its business to be in line with the technology curve.

Despite narrowed losses reported in the first quarter of 2014, Eastman Kodak Co still saw a decline of 19 percent year-on-year in its sales, more than half of which was attributed to continuous falls in sales of film and consumer inkjet products, according to the company's latest quarterly financial disclosure in May.

In a late response to the rise of digital photography and smartphones that has, over the past few years, substantially eclipsed Eastman Kodak's revenue tally, the spin-off also unveiled its ambitious plans for digital printing, which is being launched first in China.

Kodak Alaris is set to release a new service for the Chinese market on Monday, allowing for photos to be printed from smartphones and tablets on Wi-Fi-enabled printers, David Santer, the company's director of personalized imaging business for the Asia-Pacific region, told reporters on Thursday.

While Kodak Alaris has currently amassed more than 300 orders for the set-up of the new printing service, it is taking aim at establishing a network of thousands of locations throughout the country that would be equipped with such printers over the next 12 months, Santer disclosed.

The locations would be coffee shops, hair salons and wherever local customers would have an on-the-go printing need, he told the Global Times during the news briefing, toning down concerns that there might be some sort of overlap between the company's aggressive digital printing road map and Kodak's already far-reaching imaging network across the country.

Instead of being pitted against the existing imaging chain stores, a flurry of new digital printing locations will only be playing the part of a complementary service, Gerbershagen, the company's CEO, told the Global Times.