Kruchten has been president of Kodak’s Print Systems Division (PSD) since an organisational revamp at the end of 2014.
He retires on 24 April, and will be replaced by John O’Grady, who has worked at Kodak since 1997.
O’Grady (pictured below) has held a number of senior roles at the manufacturer and became president of Kodak’s loss-making Consumer & Film division just four months ago, having been worldwide general manager at PSD for two years prior to that.
He will now return to lead PSD, which is Kodak’s largest business unit. Last year sales at the division fell 7.5% to $942m (£813m) and EBITDA almost halved, falling from $106m to $58m.
Although Sonora plate volumes grew, Kodak said that aluminium price increases combined with falling volumes of conventional plates and overall price erosion impacted the figures.
Kodak chief excecutive Jeff Clarke thanked Kruchten for his “tremendous commitment to Kodak and outstanding accomplishments”, while Kruchten said: “Throughout my career at Kodak, I’ve had the pleasure of working with scores of fantastic, talented people. We’ve accomplished so much together, and I wish my Kodak family the very best moving forward.”
O’Grady said he was looking forward to working with the “all-star team” that Kruchten had assembled. “With new products in our portfolio like our Sonora X plates and the Nexfinity electrophotographic press, we are poised to thrive globally,” he said.
The Nexfinity is the latest generation of Kodak’s NexPress digital press product line. It was launched last month, as was the new Sonora X processing-free plate.
Clarke will take on responsibility for the Consumables & Film operation on an interim basis until a successor for O’Grady at that part of the business is appointed.
Separately, Kodak's plans to enter the cryptocurrency arena are moving "full speed ahead" according to the latest statement about its Initial Coin Offering of the new KodakCoin for the KodakOne image management platform.
