The Kodak Graphic Communications Group in Burnaby will not be affected by the American film and printing company’s reorganization in the U.S., a company spokeswoman told Business in Vancouver.
Eastman Kodak Co. and its U.S. subsidiaries filed for bankruptcy Thursday morning and is planning a reorganization.
Kodak owns two subsidiaries in Canada, neither of which are affected by the reorganization, according to Kodak’s kodaktransforms.com website
“Non-U.S. subsidiaries, such as the Canadian entity, which we are a part of, are not part of the filing,” Barb Willans, worldwide director of marketing for Kodak’s Vancouver group, told BIV. “So we’re not subject to the court proceedings, and we operate business as usual.”
The Burnaby division was founded by Ken Spencer and Dan Gelbart in 1983 as Creo Products.
At its height in the late 1990s, the high-tech company, which specialized in laser imaging for the printing industry, had roughly 4,000 employees world wide, about 1,400 of whom were in the Metro Vancouver area. Creo went public in 1999, and in 2005 it was bought by Eastman Kodak Co. for $980 million.
The number of staff at Kodak’s Burnaby division has since shrunk to about 400, according to BIV’s 2011 Book of Lists.
Meanwhile, south of the border, Eastman Kodak has been savaged by the digital age. The 131-year-old company has seen its market value drop from more than $30 billion 15 years ago to below $200 million today.
Eastman Kodak recently received a $950 million line of credit from Citigroup to help it stay afloat while it reorganizes.
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