Latvia's only vinyl record factory: how «Semikols» presses records
Since August 2017, a workshop on Jūrkalnes Street in Riga run by the company «Semikols» has been Latvia's only vinyl record factory, as described in an LSM.lv interview with its founder.
Vinyl records were made in Latvia long before World War II, but afterward the industry stopped entirely in the country and remained absent for several decades. Production only revived in August 2017, when the «Semikols» workshop on Jūrkalnes Street in Riga began operating.
The only factory in the country
Today «Semikols» is the only company in Latvia engaged in vinyl record manufacturing. LSM.lv's Diaspora section published an interview with the company's founder about how the production process works and how the business came to be.
The decades-long gap in production means that today's «Semikols» is not simply a continuation of an old tradition but a full revival of an industry — the relevant craft skills and equipment had long been unavailable in Latvia. The fact that the factory operates specifically in a workshop on Jūrkalnes Street in Riga points to a small but concrete presence of the industry in the capital.
LSM.lv presents the interview with the founder as a look inside the company's operations — how the record-pressing process unfolds from start to finish, and what was needed to revive this manufacturing craft, nearly forgotten in Latvia. In the article, the company's founder discusses daily life at the country's only factory of its kind.
