6 November 2005
Warwickshire photographic processor Standard Photographic has been sold to Europe's leading photo service provider CeWe Color Holding, of Oldenburg, Germany. Standard Photographic, a family-owned firm since its formation in the 1930s, is one of the top digital photo processors in the UK, serving big-name customers such as Boots, Asda, Pixology and Jessops. It also runs the UK lab for all Fujifilm mail order processing.
Its subsidiary Dipinto.co.uk supplies photographic prints and products for readers of more than 250 newspaper titles across the UK.
With turnover of around £4 million, the company operates one of the most modern digital photographic laboratories in the UK and recently invested more than £400,000 in new equipment required to handle increasing business in the rapidly expanding digital photo market.
The deal - for an undisclosed sum - took effect from November 1.
The film packing and x-ray film conversion side of Standard Photographic's business will continue, but will operate as a new separate company, GJ Bott Ltd, whose trading name is yet to be determined.
CeWe Color has 21 highly technical photo-finishing plants across 18 European countries, and employs 3,700 staff. Annually, the company supplies 3.5 billion colour prints to 63,000 trade customers and its 2004 turnover was 28.5 million.
It plans considerable investment, of -3 million, in Standard Photographic, installing new industrial processing technology and revising production procedures.
CeWe Colour is convinced that the UK digital photographic market will expand considerably and that the average 460 photographs a year taken by each digital photographer (300 in the previous year) will continue to increase.
But, currently, only one in five digital photos is printed onto photographic paper.
A CeWe spokesman said: "Actively addressing and informing customers will enable the market volume to be increased to the benefit of industrial laboratories provided that the price advantage that laboratories have is passed on to consumers in the form of attractive sales prices."
Standard Photographic employs around 65 staff.