Agfa-Gevaert

Agfa-Gevaert N.V. (Agfa) is a Belgian-German multinational corporation that develops, manufactures, and distributes analogue and digital imaging products, software, and systems. The company has three divisions. Agfa Graphics offers integrated prepress and industrial inkjet systems to the printing and graphics industries. Agfa HealthCare supplies hospitals and other care organisations with imaging products and systems, as well as information systems. Agfa Specialty Products supplies products to various industrial markets. It is part of the Agfa Materials organization. In addition to the Agfa Specialty Products activities, Agfa Materials also supplies film and related products to Agfa Graphics and Agfa HealthCare.
Agfa film and film cameras were once prominent consumer products. However, in 2004, the consumer imaging division was sold to a company founded via management buyout. AgfaPhoto GmbH, as the new company was called, filed for bankruptcy after just one year. The brands are now licensed to other companies by AgfaPhoto Holding GmbH, a holding firm. Following this sale, Agfa-Gevaert's commerce today is 100% business-to-business.
Company structure.
Headquartered in Mortsel, Belgium, Agfa has sales organisations in 40 countries. In countries where Agfa does not have its own sales organisation, the market is served by a network of agents and representatives. At the end of 2011, the company had 11,728 employees (full-time equivalent permanent) worldwide. Agfa has manufacturing plants around the world. The largest production and research centres are based in Belgium, the United States, Canada, Germany, France, Italy and China. Net sales for 2011 totalled 3,023 million euros.
Since January 1, 2019, two new entities emerged within the Agfa-Gevaert Group: Agfa HealthCare (ITCo) and Agfa (MainCo). Agfa HealthCare groups all IT-related activities of the former Agfa HealthCare business group. The newer Agfa includes the activities of the former Agfa Graphics and Agfa Specialty Products business groups, as well as the Imaging activities of the former Agfa HealthCare business group.
Agfa Healthcare.
Agfa Healthcare is a developer of medical imaging information systems, with main offices in Mortsel (Belgium), Ghent (Belgium), Waterloo (Ontario Canada), Shanghai (China), Vienna (Austria), Trier (Germany) and Bonn (Germany).
Agfa division business groups.
The activities of the Agfa division have been subdivided into three groups: Offset Solutions (the prepress business of the former Agfa Graphics business group), Digital Print & Chemicals (the inkjet business of the former Agfa Graphics business group and the activities of the former Agfa Specialty Products business group) and Radiology Solutions (the imaging activities of the former Agfa HealthCare business group).
Products.
In 2004, Agfa-Gevaert withdrew from the consumer market, including photographic film, cameras and other photographic equipment.
Because Agfa-Gevaert still produce photographic films for the aerial photography market, it is still possible to buy fresh, Agfa-produced photographic films for use in consumer cameras. They are sold by the Lomography Society and Rollei and are branded accordingly. This is because those companies purchase the aerial photography film from Agfa-Gevaert, and then cut and package it into consumer photographic formats.
As of 2012, such products carry a small Agfa logo discreetly on their packaging, but are not sold as Agfa branded products.
By contrast, Agfaphoto branded photographic films are not made by Agfa-Gevaert at all, originally having been made by the now closed Ferrania plant in Italy. Agfaphoto films are now produced by Fujifilm in Japan for Lupus Imaging Media.
Agfa cameras.
Agfa produced a range of cameras which included:
Agfa slide projectors.
Including, roughly in chronological order:
Agfa consumer and professional films.
Black & White films:
Colour reversal (slide) films:
Colour negative films:
While Agfa has retired from the photography branch, and the Agfaphoto brand was sold to a reseller named Lupus Imaging, the surviving Belgian industrial branch of Agfa continues to produce, among other things, B/W, colour negative and colour reversal materials for aerial photography. Some of these are cut to the usual 135 and 120 formats by Maco and distributed under the brand name Rollei. Specifically, these re-branded Agfa materials include Rollei Retro 80S, 200S and 400S, Digibase CN200 and CR200.
Scanners.
Agfa produced many image scanners in the Arcus, DuoScan, SnapScan, StudioScan and StudioStar ranges. While they have all been discontinued and up-to-date drivers for them are not available from Agfa, Vuescan software supports many Agfa scanners on current computer operating systems.
Agfa papers.
Agfa photographic papers were of very high quality; lines included:
The production of material identical to the last generation of fibre-based and resin-coated photographic Agfa Multigrade papers has been resumed by Adox.