Every now and then, it has become mandatory for politicians from Udhagamandalam (Ooty) in Tamil Nadu to fret about the fate of the public sector Hindustan Photo Film Company. It is now the turn of A Raja, Union communication minister, who has urged his Cabinet colleague Vilasrao Deshmukh to immediately sanction Rs 30 crore for HPF. Mr Deshmukh has assured Mr Raja that his plea would be favourably considered. HPF has been in a comatose state for many years. It continues to be propped up purely for vote bank reasons.
HPF is the creation of the heydays of self-reliance. It is another example of the misguided policies of the 60s. The company was set up in 1961 at Ooty to help the film industry and also cater to the growing need for X-ray films. It was thought necessary to set up a technological base in a country that has one of the largest feature film industries in the world.
However, all HPF did was to constantly lock horns with the industry. The photography business and the film industry never took it seriously as the company was always mired in muddled bureaucratic thinking. Today film is dead. It is the era of digital technology where change is happening at break neck speed. So to revive HPF is a meaningless exercise.
In the pre-digital days, photo film technology was the closely guarded stronghold of companies like Kodak, Agfa, ORWO and Fuji. They were not ready to part with technology. HPF therefore had to settle with a little known French firm for black and white range of films.
The quality of the B&W films HPF produced came in for a lot of criticism for lack of consistency. The company never produced colour negative film for camera. It was not in a financial position to invest in colour technology. What it did was import jumbo colour rolls from leading manufacturers, slit, and finish them in its factory and make some money out of value addition.
The other two products it manufactured were bromide paper and X-ray film. Unfortunately both were based on outdated technology. It?s X-ray film was coated on acetate, which was not a stable base.
Consequently, HPF?s X-ray rolls were not in great demand. The company eventually went in for collaboration with DuPont to manufacture polyester-based X-ray and graphic art film. This Rs 300 crore investment never took off in spite of a huge building coming up. People in the industry were questioning its viability even then.
As it happens, the entire X-ray film scene has changed now. DuPont is no longer manufacturing X-ray films. Kodak has sold its medical X-ray division to Carestream Health of the US. This company sells its jumbo rolls to HPF and others to convert and sell in the local market. HPF no longer has the monopoly. But it is trudging along by supplying to some public sector units.
The end of HPF should have occurred in 1992 when the government allowed the private sector to import jumbo rolls, the entire range including photo films, and convert them. HPF management deeply resented the entry of the private sector and fought tooth and nail to retain its monopoly in the conversion business.
Meanwhile, the world as HPF knew it disappeared almost overnight. Camera film as a business, film processing, are all fast becoming extinct. It is all digital imaging now. Images are being loaded on to CDs or floppy disks. Even five years ago it used to be 70%print and 30% digital in photography. Now in India too it is almost 100%digital. So demand for related products like processing chemicals is also down.
What has gone up is paper consumption. That is because now one can click 300 images and put them on digital paper. The concept of photo albums has changed because of digital paper. Kodak and Agfa have stopped manufacturing colour print paper. Konica has sold its paper division to DNP, the world?s largest photographic paper manufacturer.
They make dye sublimation paper with which one can make instant prints. Technology of filmmaking has also undergone enormous changes and HPF is no longer even trading in cinema film. So HPF is out of all these growing areas.
By 1999, the government decided to end HPF?s monopoly. Everybody was allowed to import film, convert and sell. Says JP Acharya, managing director, Computer Graphics Ltd, a veteran in the conversion business, ?Slitting and converting is not such a simple process. Nor are the MNCs willing to do business with all and sundry.? So now it is the survival of the fittest and those who have been able to morph into the digital age. Predictably HPF collapsed.
There are still 500 odd employees remaining in HPF struggling along. Union leaders and politicians keep talking about reviving the unit. There have been attempts to enter into joint ventures with the private sector, which is not willing to bite. Even the Tamil Nadu government has sensibly not shown any interest in running it. HPF is sitting on prime real estate. But it belongs to the forest department, which will reclaim it as soon as HPF loses its public sector status.
Under the circumstances, it is difficult to understand why politicians and the union officials do not wake up and face reality.