Agfa pulls out of photo film

Belgium's Agfa-Gevaert, one of the best-known names in camera film, said yesterday it was quitting the industry due to the booming popularity of digital cameras.

While international rivals Eastman Kodak and Fuji Photo Film Co. revamp their film divisions to cope with the digital camera craze, Agfa is abandoning its historic roots and selling its consumer photography unit to managers for €175.5 million. Agfa made almost one in 10 of the rolls of film sold across the world last year. But global film sales have fallen 13 per cent since their peak in 2001, while sales of digital cameras, which store pictures on a computer memory chip, have almost tripled.

"Consumer Imaging has been losing cash for the past 18 months," Agfa Chief Financial Officer Marc Gedopt told a news conference.

"Basically, we are separating ourselves from our roots," Chief Executive Ludo Verhoeven said, explaining he wanted to focus on growing Agfa's medical diagnosis and printing equipment units.

He said Agfa had no firm plans yet on what to do with the €260 million he expects the deal to bring in over the next four years, but hoped to make acquisitions in the growing medical imaging sector in the next few months.

Agfa is targeting the highly profitable and fragmented European market for computerised scanning systems which bring together medical data on patients.