Austin's Gold Rush Vinyl Doubles Record Manufacturing Capacity
Pressing plant expands machinery to meet steady demand
By Chad Swiatecki, Fri., Feb. 17, 2023
The ongoing boom in the popularity of vinyl records has been good for business at Austin's Gold Rush Vinyl pressing plant – so good that the North Austin company has added two new pressing machines.
The new machines – a pair of Pheenix Alpha AD12 presses manufactured in Sweden – will allow Gold Rush to double its production and keep up with demand. They're expected to be up and running this week. Once fully operational, company founder Caren Kelleher said Gold Rush will be able to turn out "tens of thousands" of pieces of vinyl every week for bands and labels in Austin and far beyond.
The new capacity will cut the company's turnaround time down to three to four months, some of the fastest delivery in an industry still struggling to keep up with the resurgence in vinyl sales that began more than a decade ago. Kelleher said she no longer worries about the vinyl boom turning out to be a fad, with typical order sizes taken by the company growing from 500 to 1,000 or more pieces in recent years. Business stayed strong even through the pandemic, when touring collapsed and recording artists had to rely on physical product sales to generate income.
"In 2020 and 2021, sales numbers across the industry were through the roof. The number of quote requests and order requests we [had] coming in indicated that the business was going to keep growing," she said, noting that the wait time for pressing machines from manufacturers in Canada, Germany, and the Czech Republic has grown alongside record orders.
"With the explosive growth of vinyl, a lot of the big pressing plants grabbed up all available equipment, so what used to be a three-month lead time for new machines became about 18 months. We had hoped to have these machines installed much sooner. We decided to get them in February 2020, and our second machine finally arrived in November 2022."
Expansion to four lines in the company's 8,400-square-foot facility will require a staffing increase. Kelleher expects to hire up to six more full-time workers to handle pressing, packaging, and many other tasks involved in the very specialized, and at times challenging, manufacturing process.
During a recent visit, staff shared stories about how the two Canadian-made WarmTone machines, which have been running for five years, have developed animallike idiosyncrasies that require regular attention and problem-solving. For example, the same vinyl pellets melt and press differently based solely on what color bag – brown or white – they were packaged in.
Beyond the new presses, Gold Rush has set up a creative studio area that uses its trimmings and waste vinyl material to make decorative products like notebooks, earrings, clocks, and vinyl flower bouquets available for Valentine's Day.
Also, a local investor gifted Gold Rush an Eighties-era particle deposition and vaporization machine that looks like it came straight out of The Adventures of Flash Gordon. The vintage technology allows the company to create commemorative gold- and platinum-plated records. Operating as a separate business unit under Gold Rush Vinyl, the company can serve fans who want a decorative ode to a favorite album, or artists looking to make keepsake mountings of successful records.
After spending more than a year to get the deposition machine up and running, reception for the gold record business has been strong. Oklahoma composer Kitt Wakeley, who met Kelleher through membership in the Recording Academy, turned to the company to honor the musicians and producers who contributed to his recent Grammy-winning album An Adoption Story.
"It's a great keepsake," he said. "Not everyone involved with the project will receive a Grammy trophy, but they deserved it. This was something I knew would be eye-catching and they'd want to hang on their wall."
Wakeley, who also uses Gold Rush to press his next April album, notes that the company's turnaround time is far better than the 18-to-24 months he was quoted from other pressing plants around the country.
The appeal is similar for Austin's Spaceflight Records, which has pressed a half-dozen albums through Gold Rush and has five releases scheduled for 2023. Founder Brett Orrison said Gold Rush has consistently delivered high-quality, on-time runs, with the local availability providing a clear advantage over other pressing plants in Detroit, Nashville, and Athens, Georgia. The doubling of capacity, he said, sends a clear signal that Austin has a reliable industry resource committed to independent artists and labels.
"It's important to champion the industry in this town, and having a vinyl record plant is amazing so we're trying to use Gold Rush as much as possible," he said. "They've always reached [our] expectations to get things done on time and give us clean, nice-sounding records."
The indie label joins a growing mix of customers turning to the company with niche orders – from video game soundtracks and podcast recordings to commemorative products for the Moody Center, Fairmont Austin hotel, and major corporations such as Dropbox.
"That's a different kind of business that provides us some other opportunities," adds Kelleher. "So that's been a nice and strange change, in terms of how much of our business is shifting to other businesses commissioning vinyl."
