British record company, legally operating under this name between April 1959 and December 1971.
Philips was introduced as a record label in the UK as a division of Philips Electrical Ltd. in January 1953. From April 1959, all phonographic activities were transferred to the newly-established 'Philips Records Ltd.' This division handled Philips Phonografische Industrie's labels in the UK, such as Philips, Polydor, Fontana, Vertigo, and from the middle of 1967, it was also manufacturing and distributing the releases of Liberty Records Limited. It was the first company to manufacture and distribute CBS releases in Europe.
Between April 1959 and March 1969, the company also operated a mastering, processing and vinyl pressing plant in Walthamstow, East London under this name.
The plant pressed for all Philips labels, and, among others, also records for Mercury, Atlantic and Stax.
Lacquer cuts are commonly identifiable by a machine-stamped separator "//" followed by a "▽" and "420" within the curved matrix. Some of these identifiers may be omitted but are usually followed by trailing stamped numerals, indicating replicated mothers for pressing.
Additional IDs, such as 1F/2F, 1Y/2Y, 1L/2L etc. before or after the "// ▽ 420" (e.g. 267921 1F // 420) are side and format identifiers:
F after the side identifier (1/2) stands for 7" 45 RPM Mono (until 1969, and since 1970 for 7" 45 RPM in general)
L after the side identifier (1/2) stands for 12" 33 1/3 RPM Mono (until the end of the 1960s)
T after the side identifier (1/2) stands for 7" 33 1/3 RPM Mono, Long Playing (until the mid 1960s)
W after the side identifier (1/2) stands for 12" 33 1/3 RPM Stereo (later replaced by 1Y/2Y)
Y after the side identifier (1/2) stands for 12" Stereo (regardless the speed - LP and 12").
Push-out centres on UK Philips-made singles were most commonly of a 3-prong design, but they did also manufacture 4-prong centres and solid centres. In the late 1960s - unusually for the UK market - the Philips plant also manufactured pre-dinked 'large-hole' 45s, which were typically distributed with additional plastic 'spider' centre adaptors. This continued into the 1970's following the transiton to Phonogram Ltd.. All of these centre variants require separate entries in the database.
After an initial trial in 1966, full cassette duplication and manufacturing facilities were added in January 1967. Installed were four fully automated master playback machines feeding eight slave recorders. The plant manufactured musicassettes and virgin tape cassettes.
Legal entity timeline:
UK Company number: 00586873
8 July 1957 to 30 April 1959: Record Pressers Ltd.
30 April 1959 to 31 December 1971: 'Philips Records Ltd.'
1 January 1972 to 13 December 1994: Phonogram Ltd.
13 December 1994: Mercury Records Ltd.
Plant timeline:
January 1953 to 7 July 1957: National Plastics Ltd.
8 July 1957 to 29 April 1959: 'Record Pressers Ltd.'
30 April 1959 to 20 February 1969 (registered 18 March 1969): 'Philips Records Ltd.'
After 18 March 1969: Phonodisc Ltd.
