Growing up next to the world’s largest building on one floor, Boeing’s manufacturing plant in Everett, Washington, which grew to more than double it’s size while I grew up, I can respect large production facilities. China and Kodak have just announced that Kodak has built the world’s largest disposable camera production base in Xiamen of east China’s Fujian Province.
The new factory, covering 60,000 square meters, was backed up by investment of US$20 million. The whole production base, including an existing factory which was built in 2001, is now capable of producing 100 million disposable cameras every year.Antonio Perez, president and CEO of Kodak, said that the building of the new factory indicated their confidence in China’s emerging market for the imaging industry. Though facing a challenge from digital cameras, Perez predicted a 7 to 10 percent of growth rate in disposable camera business…while demand for disposable cameras in China is relatively low….the majority are exported to the United States, Japan and European countries…reaching US$100 million last year.
With all these new disposable cameras coming into the market, it’s also good to know that Kodak has also announced that it has been “setting up a recycling network across the world to make use of the disposed cameras. So far, some 80 to 85 percent of disposable cameras have been recycled.”
So if you do take a disposable camera on the road, which is a great idea for the traveler traveling lightweight, remember to recycle the camera so we can increase that number to 100%.