CBS, Haarlem

About CBS, Haarlem

The CBS plant in Haarlem pressed vinyl, duplicated tapes and printed sleeves under the CBS name from 1971 to 1990; its official name was CBS International Manufacturing and Service Center, and it was the largest CBS manufacturing plant in continental Europe and the only one with its own printing operation.^[1] It began in 1958 as Artone Holland, a 7-inch pressing plant; CBS bought half of it in 1966 and had full ownership by 1971.^[1]

Printing and LP and cassette lines were added in January 1974, a fire in September 1980 destroyed most of the jacket assembly plant, and a new printing plant opened in June 1982. A 3-inch CD line ran from November 1989. Although Sony had merged with CBS Records in 1988, the plant passed to Sony Music on 1 January 1991. Its pressings print "Made in Holland" on the labels and runouts of the form 01 465800 20 1A1 A, the first pair of digits being a CBS label code and the pair after the catalogue number a sort code (20 for a 12-inch record).^[1]