When people hear the name Kodak, memories of slide projectors, film canisters, and yellowing family photos often surface first. For more than a century, the company defined how the world captured and kept moments, but the question on most people’s minds today is simple: what does Kodak make now? The answer is no longer just film and photo paper. While the ghost of that legacy lingers, the modern Kodak is a technology company that has aggressively pivoted away from consumer photography toward specialized, high-tech manufacturing in sectors like print security, packaging, and functional printing. The transformation from iconic camera brand to industrial tech supplier is a story of adaptation, reinvention, and strategic diversification.
The End of an Era: The Consumer Photography Exit
The narrative of Kodak’s decline in the consumer market is well documented, but it is essential context for understanding its current operations. The company’s hesitation to fully embrace the digital revolution allowed competitors to seize the market, and by the early 2000s, the familiar yellow packaging was rapidly disappearing from store shelves. This strategic retreat from cameras and consumer film was not a collapse but a calculated withdrawal. By shedding the unprofitable and low-margin consumer segments, Kodak was able to focus its considerable engineering prowess and brand equity on more resilient and profitable industrial applications. The cameras are gone, but the imaging science remains.
Today’s Core Business: Print Security and Packaging
Walking into a modern Kodak facility today, you would not find aisles of film stock but rather high-speed manufacturing lines dedicated to advanced materials. The company’s primary revenue streams now come from two sophisticated sectors: Print Security and Packaging & Functional Printing. In the Print Security space, Kodak produces secure substrates for passports, identity cards, and official documents. This involves intricate security inks, holographic overlays, and tamper-proof materials that require extreme precision. In the Packaging segment, the focus shifts to high-quality flexible packaging for food, pharmaceuticals, and consumer goods, where print quality, barrier properties, and sustainability are paramount.
Functional Printing and Nanotechnology Perhaps the most futuristic aspect of the modern Kodak is its dive into functional printing and nanotechnology. This is where the company’s century-old expertise in emulsion chemistry finds a new purpose. Kodak produces conductive inks and pigments used in printed electronics, allowing circuits to be printed directly onto flexible materials rather than being etched onto rigid silicon. These materials are finding their way into RFID tags, flexible displays, and even solar cells. The company is effectively treating the printed page not as a final product, but as a platform for embedding intelligence and functionality directly into everyday objects. Commercial Print and Publishing
Perhaps the most futuristic aspect of the modern Kodak is its dive into functional printing and nanotechnology. This is where the company’s century-old expertise in emulsion chemistry finds a new purpose. Kodak produces conductive inks and pigments used in printed electronics, allowing circuits to be printed directly onto flexible materials rather than being etched onto rigid silicon. These materials are finding their way into RFID tags, flexible displays, and even solar cells. The company is effectively treating the printed page not as a final product, but as a platform for embedding intelligence and functionality directly into everyday objects.
Despite the digital shift, high-volume commercial printing remains a vital industry, and Kodak holds a significant position here. The company supplies a range of plates, chemicals, and press equipment optimized for newspaper, magazine, and catalog production. Its Prinergy workflow system is a critical piece of software that manages the entire printing process from digital file to press plate. For publishers and large-format printers who need consistent, high-speed output, Kodak provides the essential tools that keep the global information supply chain moving, even as the media itself evolves toward digital distribution.
