[jhalphen]

Good day Gentlemen,

I have just come back from spending 2 days at the RACS factory in
southern France.

Day one was spent with UK collector Panrock (Steve O.) accompanied by
one of his customers. Day two was an all day Q & A with the two brothers
who own RACS.

VK USA and UK Vintage being public forums i will remain evasive on
certain private issues, but will be happy to answer personal inquiries
by PM.

Yes, the closing rumors are founded. The reasons are multiple, let me
briefly explain them here.

One) The demand is tapering off fast. After the huge french railway
order, 4000 CRTs over 4 years, the contract has been delivered. The
perspectives of another big order like this one are slim.

Two) supply of parts is getting downright impossible: for 1000 of the
SNCF CRTs, RACS had to locate 30 container's worth of raw glass shells
and screens found in Syria! and bring them to France. These were unused
leftovers of when Corning Glass ruled the roost and set up factories all
over the Middle East. For this batch alone, supplies came from 12
countries and the CRTs were built as brand-new from the raw spares.

Actually the french railway and some other customers would like them to
continue operations but where do you locate today raw inventory of this
volume?

Three) Just to break even, the factory needs to produce 1200 CRTs/year
over 10 months, counting in 1 month of summer holidays + 1 month of
assorted legal/religious holidays. That's 120 tubes/month.

Four) When you regun CRTs, there is a step where the process fundamentally differ: in the case of the fairly recent railway CRTs, NOS complete gun assemblies were in stock or purchaseable, allowing for very fast regunning in volume quantities. However for vintage/collector jobs the gun has to be rebuilt by hand. In some unlucky cases where the gun's cathode, filament and G1 grid are impossible to reach because other electrodes are in the way, or because of sheer fragility, the entire gun must be carefully disassembled then reconstructed. Believe it or not, this can up to two full days and only François does it.

Don't think that simple triode guns are fast & easy, this 2 day job was on a pre-war CRT used in a mirror set Telefunken. More recent color CRTs can be rebuilt a profit providing you have a NOS gun assembly. Any 1950s tri-color will require 3x hand rebuilding of all guns.

Which also explains BTW why no one gets rich in this business today, 4 to 6 days of skilled labor for one kinescope if billed at true cost, is already way over the price quoted for 15G rebuilds.

Five) François R. the CTO is attained by the "Scotty" (Hawkeye) factor. Now in his ealy 60s, he wants to paint, go fishing and enjoy life a bit inasmuch as you can while having to care for a severely invalid family member.

Six) The future.
Parts are being purchased to ensure continued rebuilding in spite of suppliers closing down production lines.

At the end of Q2 2012 RACS will assess it's financial situation and make decisions. They are a variety of options such as part time operation, reduction of workforce to a bare-bones crew, etc. François is a highly active fully trained engineer and actually enjoys the variety and challenges of collector tube rebuilds, finds it much less boring than a dull batch of 1000 19" or 21" 110° monochrome CRTS all of the same type.

The factory being in a floodable area, it happened 5 times over the last 35 years, the building and land have very low resale value. The machinery is worthless and will end up in the tip or sold at scrap metal prices. The huge inventory of chemicals and new parts is sellable.
Salvaging and moving some of the production gear to the US or UK is a possibility but aside from the cost/where/when questions it's an industrial project requiring a leader, dedication and a lot of energy.
François quoted it took one year to train a person to be a competent glass worker...

Interesting to complete Scotty's ETF donation is a 3x station screen coating line which Hawkeye did not have and all-electric ovens which offer much better control ability and less risk of contamination and fire than gas-heated ovens.

7) Conclusion
This is i believe a fair and transparent assessment of the current situation. I will endeavor to keep you all updated on a timely basis to avoid any bad surprise short notice of closure and give time for all to get wanted/needed jobs taken care of but do bear in mind that time is getting short and the Western World being in a recession does make operation of a small co. in a receding market increasingly difficult.

Best Regards

jhalphen
Paris/France