Eastman Kodak says it bought $300 million of silver in 2011

Eastman Kodak Co. bought about $300 million of silver last year.

The price of silver was 199 percent to 294 percent higher than in 2008, Rochester, New York-based Kodak said in its Chapter 11 filing in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan. Silver is used in the company’s film, photofinishing and entertainment group. The $300 million equals 8.49 million ounces of the metal at last year’s average price of $35.32 an ounce.

Silver prices doubled in the past two years as more investors bought the metal to hedge against declines in the dollar and other assets and demand from other industrial applications climbed. The metal’s industrial uses include solar panels, plasma screens and chemical catalysts.

Global silver use in photographic film fell to 72.7 million ounces last year, the lowest amount since at least 1990, as consumers worldwide moved to digital technology, according to the Washington-based Silver Institute’s annual world silver survey by Thomson Reuters GFMS. Photography accounted for less than 10 percent of manufactured applications for silver in 2010 compared with 30 percent in 1990, it said.