You can now press seven-inch vinyls in Helsinki
Finland’s only vinyl record manufacturer, Helsingin Levypuristamo, started producing seven-inch vinyl records last month. One of the company’s two fully automatic Pheenix Alpha AD12 machines can now press both 12-inch and 7-inch records.
The first seven-inch produced by the record pressing plant was a single from a joint project between saxophonist Timo Lassy and trumpeter Jukka Eskola. The 7-inch is a good format not only for singles, but also for marginal and self-employed artists, as it is cheaper to produce than 12-inch discs.
Helsinki-based Levypuristamo took another step forward last month when it produced Finland’s first vinyl record pressed from biovinyl. Jazz guitarist Janne Halonen’s album Music from the Zone replaces fossil crude oil with recycled cooking oil, among other things.
“However, the extruded material is still technically the same polyvinyl chloride (PVC), so you can’t tell the difference by looking at it or hearing it,” Helsingin Levypuristamo said in a Facebook update on 18 October.
Biovinyl is not yet in Levypuristamo’s range, as it requires certification to prove the origin of the material. A small test batch of the material was used to press Music from the Zone with the permission of the manufacturer.
Experimenting with a more climate-friendly material is not the only attempt by Helsingin Levypuristamo to offset its energy emissions. The company uses domestic renewable electricity to manufacture its plates, and the waste heat from the manufacturing process is processed and sold to the district heating network in Helsinki. In addition, any surplus plastic is recycled for reuse.
The company also intends to start producing thinner 110-gram vinyl records. These were still the standard in the 1980s.
“There is no scientific reason why a thicker vinyl would sound better. We are currently making 140 gram records, and we will soon start making even thinner 110 gram records – also for the sake of ecology,” Lupu Pitkänen, the company’s CEO, said in an interview with Helsingin Sanomat in December 2022.
Vinyl record production in Finland ended in 1995 when the Finnvox record pressing plant closed down following the CD revolution. However, during the 2010s, vinyl’s popularity took off again, which backed up the queues at the few vinyl factories by up to half a year. Helsingin Levypuristamo was established in 2021 to meet this demand, as well as to provide a domestic alternative to vinyl records shipped from abroad.
