Japan’s Fuji Photo Film Company has said it’s planning a 3 to 20 percent across-the-board price hike for all its film and photosensitive material offerings due to the rising costs of silver and crude oil. Fuji is the second-largest film producer after Kodak; Kodak announced last month it planned to increase consumer and professional film prices as much as 17 percent.
The last time Fuji has universally raised its film prices was in 1980 when Texan billionaire Hunt Brothers attempted to corner the silver market and sent prices over $50 an ounce. Silver prices recently hit $15 an ounce on world commodity markets.
However, rising oil prices are also hurting Fuji; oil is required to manufacture the plastics used in many of its products, as well as the cost of transporting manufactured film and cameras to market.
Since Konica-Minolta announced it was exiting the film business earlier in 2006, Fuji and Kodak are the only major film manufacturers remaining in a market which is estimated to be shrinking by as much as 20 percent a year.
