More than a year after declaring Chapter 11 bankruptcy, Kodak has made a deal to sell the camera film business on which it was founded, among other assets. As part of a $2.8 billion settlement agreement with its largest creditor, the U.K. Kodak Pension Plan (KPP), the company’s personalized imaging and document imaging businesses will be spun off under new ownership to KPP. The deal, announced today and subject to the approval of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court, will also give Kodak $650 million to help it emerge from bankruptcy.
So what is actually set to be spun off? You may recall that Kodak recently sold its digital imaging patents for $525 million and then pulled a Polaroid by licensing the Kodak brand name to Los Angeles-based JK Imaging for consumer products such as digital cameras, pocket video cameras, and portable projectors (having shuttered the Kodak digital cameras business last year), as it moves to focus on B2B commercial imaging. The business units involved in the KPP deal are personalized imaging, which includes retail photo kiosks and dry lab systems, photographic paper and workflow solutions, still-camera film products, and “event imaging solutions,” which allows theme parks to sell garishly framed souvenir photos to queasy, fresh-off-the-rollercoaster types. The deal will also divest Kodak of its document imaging business, a line of scanners, software, and professional services.
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