Photography Pioneer Eastman Kodak Company filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy Protection

Photography Pioneer Eastman Kodak Company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on 19 January 2012. The 132-year-old trailblazer is likely to become the most storied casualty of a digital age. Eastman Kodak Company filed for bankruptcy protection to re-organise its businesses in order to survive intense competition.

Kodak and its US subsidiaries has filed voluntary petitions for Chapter 11 business reorganisation in the US Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York.

Kodak which has been in existence for over 130 years, has many firsts to its credit, including the invention of cameras as well as the use of its technology for taking the initial photographs of the moon’s surface.

The firm had been struggling to keep afloat and had exited certain traditional operations, closing 13 manufacturing plants and 130 processing labs and reducing its workforce by 47000 since 2003.

The company has obtained a lifeline of USD 950 million from Citigroup Inc and expects to emerge from the restructuring in 2013 as a lean, profitable, digital imaging and materials science company.

Kodak expects that business reorganisation would bolster its liquidity in the US and abroad, monetise non-strategic intellectual property, fairly resolve legacy liabilities as well as enable the company to focus on its most valuable business lines.

It has made pioneering investments in digital and materials deposition technologies in recent years, generating about 75 per cent of its revenue from digital businesses in 2011.