A few miles outside of DC, in Fairfax, VA, will be the site for a massive new vinyl pressing facility, thanks to Furnace MFG. After opening in January 2018, they should bring around forty new jobs to the region.
While the company has been in business since the mid-’90s, most of their album pressings were outsourced to a plant in Europe. With this new facility, they anticipate moving much of their production back stateside.
“In 21 years of running Furnace, this has been the hardest but most rewarding thing we’ve ever accomplished,” said founder and CEO Eric Astor in a press release. “We have an incredible staff who are passionate about vinyl, love our customers, and are always looking for better ways of doing everything. Their commitment is really what makes this company special and why I’m so confident this expansion will be successful.”
It’s great to see someone who came out of the DIY punk scene taking the opportunity to help new and independent artists get their records made right here in the U.S. Astor even went to Mexico himself to procure ten Toolex Alpha record presses.
In all, the company’s new plant will have 16 presses (ten Toolex Alpha presses, two Viryl WarmTone presses, and four Furnace designed semi-automatic presses) capable of firing out nine million records per year.
And finally, one of the most impressive statistics from their site is that they’re planning on giving five percent of their profits to charity.
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