New Vinyl Plants Opening in Oregon, Vermont

It's no secret there's a logjam in the vinyl production business. As the medium continues to soar in popularity, vinyl manufacturers are dealing with long lines and doubling their production capacity to meet demand.

But that doesn't deal with the overarching issue -- that, in all, there are still fewer than 20 record pressing facilities in the country, at last count. But a few brave souls -- one group based in Oregon, and the other in Vermont -- are taking on expensive overhead and an uncertain future to notch that number up just a bit.

Cascade Record Pressing, based just outside Portland, Ore., officially opened their doors last week. The plant hosts six record presses, which originally came from the long-shuttered Hub Servall plant in New Jersey. (Record presses themselves aren't manufactured anymore -- one of the main reasons the number of plants in the U.S. has stayed so low.)

Cascade is the first pressing plant in the Pacific Northwest. They say for now they're focusing on manufacturing 12" records. "We want to work on doing one thing and doing it well," Mark Rainey, one of the founders of the company, told the Portland Mercury. "Right now that's 12-inch vinyl, at 150 to 180 grams, depending on what the client wants, in various custom colors. We just want to have nice, clean, shiny, flat records that play well and sound great."

Clear on the other side of the country, Burlington Record Plant, based in Burlington, Vt., is getting ready to open its doors. Justin Crowther, one of the plant's owners, told Vermont Public Radio they'd be ready to start production in about a month. “I feel like some of those independent artists, because the bigger names are coming in, are having trouble pressing records. That’s another M.O. of the company, catering to that,” said Crowther.

Burlington Record Plant is equipped with two record presses, with Crowther said he "found ... in Germany."