Asia-Pacific managing director Lois Lebegue said the local industry had nothing to fear because Kodak was now focused on printing and the Asia-Pacific.
“The focus of the company is going to be very, very strong on commercial publishing, packaging, digital printing and services to enterprises,” he told ProPrint.
“[The printing industry] is a very important, profitable and growing business for us,” he said.
“Asia-Pacific is our growth engine. Asia-Pacific with this reorganisation will become bigger in terms of size in the company.”
Kodak plans to reduce costs in Australia and possibly shed jobs, said Lebegue.
However, he said there would be no fall in customer service and technical support.
Australian managing director Adrian Fleming told ProPrint that local staff had generally reacted calmly to the dramas of the past eight months, despite the inevitable uncertainty.
The restructuring continued last week with Kodak announcing that it had axed the role of president and chief operating officer, cutting Philip J Faraci.
Kodak has laid off 2,700 workers worldwide since entering Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in January. The extra 1,000 redundancies will occur by the end of the year and are expected to save about US$330 million ($312 million).
Meanwhile, Kodak has also postponed the sale of its patents “until further notice”. Kodak had earlier tipped the sale to be worth as much as US$2.6bn.
Kodak is “continuing to explore other alternatives with respect to the digital imaging patents and their intellectual property more broadly and may not reach acceptable terms with parties via the auction process”.
The firm said if no transaction took place, it would consult with creditors on the possibility of “the retention of the imaging patent assets and the creation of a newly formed licensing company as a source of recovery for creditors”.
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Additional reporting from PrintWeek
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