MICHAEL FREMER visits GZ Media (Gramofonové Závody [Gramophone Record Factory]) in the Czech Republic.

" Founded in 1951, is the world's largest vinyl manufacturer. In 2015 GZ produced 65,000 records a day! "

" You have to see the place to believe it, so here's a factory tour! It's long, because there's so much to see, including the enormous pressing plant, the copper disc (DMM) production facility, the printing and box producing division and GZ's own vinyl pellet manufacturing facility located on-site. "

I think, in the vid that CEO Michal Sterba said that GZ pressed 30 million records last year! (That's 82,000 per day, or one every second )

(You'll see in the comments, that there's quite some contention about the quality of GZ's pressings.)

DarkLantern blog - darklanternforowen.wordpress.com

i've had mainly awful GZ pressings.

on one occasion, i needed to combine 3 fleetwood mac rumours anniversary box sets to make one good set of LPs

I have a lot of GZ pressings as I tended to purchase most of my lps through Europe. I would say my success rate would be over 90% with regards poor physical product, warps, dishing etc. Far more problems with some of the American plants. From time to time I have had records had have what looks like a slight discoloration to the playing surface, most notably Deep Purple's Made in Japan 9lp box set. Cleaning didn't remove this but all the lps play just fine with out any intrusive background noise.
I have seen GZ reps explain that to some extent they are at the hands of the label or group as to how the record turns out, and not just for mastering decisions but also preparation of the mother and stampers, inner sleeves etc. If the client is hell bent of keeping their costs down then the chances increase of problems down the line.
GZ do appear to have upped their game in the last couple of years . Rolling Stones Mono box and Free album collection to name two are close to perfect.

Compare this to Optimal (on the surface, a far cleaner looking pressing plant).

Workers wear two gloves instead of only one, a lot of presses more enclosed/protected. Even the glass/plastic windows around the presses are clean cf the older grubby ones at GZ.

Flash, regrind is recycled but not for vinyl records, so only virgin vinyl used.

25 million record capacity per annum.

Wow that is one mighty clean factory at Optimal... the floors were polished in the factory..

i was surprised to learn they have only been pressing vinyl for 20 years or so ?

i've only ever had one really bad optimal pressing.

a hard day's night from the mono box set, i bought a replacement rather than send the whole box back.

What was the problem with A Hard Day's Night?

all the albums in the box were in mint condtion, except AHDN

AHDN looked distinctly secondhand.

warped, spindle marks on labels etc.