Sonopress Increases Production Capacity For ‘Eco Records’
Sonopress plans to produce even more environmentally friendly “eco-records” going forward. The Gütersloh-based storage media manufacturer recently commissioned another production machine into operation, due to increasing demand from artists, record companies and music lovers. The plan is to expand the machine fleet again in the months again.
Storage media manufacturer Sonopress, part of the Bertelsmann Marketing Services division, commissioned another machine for the production of EcoRecords a few days ago. EcoRecord is a revolutionary new form of Long-Playing (LP) record, manufactured using recyclable polyethylene terephthalate (PET) instead of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) as the base material. An injection-molding process requiring neither natural gas nor steam is used to produce the discs. This reduces the environmental impact of the manufacturing process by up to 85 percent compared to conventional methods.
Further additions to the machine fleet planned
Sonopress Managing Director Sven Deutschmann is pleased about the great success of the climate-friendly LP records: “Sustainability is becoming an increasingly important topic in the music plates industry, and our offerings cater to the high level of interest shown by artists, labels and music lovers in eco-friendly products. To meet the steadily rising demand for EcoRecords, we have now ramped up our production capacities at the Gütersloh site and plan to increase our machine fleet again in the coming months.” According to Deutschmann, the company is currently able to produce up to two million PET LP records per year.
The EcoRecord success story began just nine months ago. In March, after months of preparation, Sonopress produced and delivered the first EcoRecord order for its customer Warner Music Group (WMG): a joint album by legendary rock icons Liam Gallagher & John Squire. As the year progressed, numerous other artists decided to work with Sonopress to bring sustainable LPs to market. They included such well-known artists as Ed Sheeran and the band Coldplay. The latter even released their new album “Moon Music” exclusively as an EcoRecord; this marked the first time that PET recycled worldwide was used as the base material for the production of the LPs. Coldplay even presented an “Eco Record” manufactured by Sonopress on stage at a concert in Budapest. And now the Gütersloh-based company has begun producing “EcoCDs” as well, another innovation that saves large amounts of CO2 during production. Coldplay became the first “EcoCD” client as well.
