Tech

Canadian vinyl company creates automated record press

by Jeremy Mersereau

Photo: Glenn Lowson for The Globe and Mail

Even though we’re in the midst of what’s probably the eighth consecutive year of the “vinyl resurgence”, consumer demand for vinyl records is still far outpacing the industry’s ability to actually press them.

The main bottleneck: new presses haven’t been manufactured in decades, with German startup Newbilt Machinery building the first new machines in 30 years for Jack White’s Third Man Records. Old used machines are clunky, prone to breakdowns, and most pressing of all, limited in number, forcing a never-ending stream of manufacturing delays as labels wait for their turn.

Enter Viryl Technologies, a new Canadian company backed with $1 million from a Toronto investor. The company has designed a modernized record press that will be able to automatically mold, press and cool records after a few settings have been entered. The press is hands-off and easy to use. A worker could ideally be running two machines at once without breaking a sweat. Once manufacturing gets going, Viryl plans to sell its machines for $160,000 (U.S.) each to buyers worldwide.

“The idea is to help the industry get rid of its own bottlenecks,” Viryl CEO Chad Brown told The Globe And Mail. Brown is uniquely suited to run Viryl, having owned and operated both an indie label and Markham vinyl pressing plant Acme Vinyl until it closed in 2007.

Canada only currently has one major record pressing plant, Canada Boy Vinyl in Calgary (famed for its “Dirtbag Special”) which opened last September. If Viryl’s new, bottleneck-smashing presses take off, expect that number to rise as exponentially as record sales have been over the last decade.