It is a number with nine zeros and another milestone in the almost sixty-year history of Sonopress. A few days ago, the seven-billionth optical data carrier came off the production line at the replication company’s main plant on Carl-Bertelsmann-Strasse. The triumphal advance of the silver discs began in spring 1985 with the automated production of the first digital storage media in Guetersloh. According to the company's chronicle, the first contract was for 100 CD-ROMs for the client Nixdorf. In February 1997, the one-billionth CD was produced, and now, 20 years later, the seven-billion mark has been passed.
“Seven billion optical storage media is an absolutely unbelievable amount,” says Sonopress Managing Director Sven Deutschmann. “This makes Gütersloh one of the world’s leading centers for the production of CDs, Super Audio CDs, CD-ROMs, DVDs, Blu-rays and UHDs. If the discs were to be distributed evenly around the globe, we would have supplied every human being on the planet with at least one silver disc made in Gütersloh.” For more than thirty years, Sonopress has been producing digital storage media for customers that include every major record company, numerous game producers and Hollywood studios like Warner Bros. and Universal Pictures International.
The global media service provider’s most recent successful model is the 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray Disc with a storage capacity of up to 100 gigabytes. Over four million of them have been produced in Gütersloh to date. Sonopress is a central technology provider for the new format, and won the prestigious DEG Award for Best Digital Product or Service Innovation for 2016 at the beginning of the year. “With our hugely successful entry into UHD production, we proved, more than thirty years after taking up CD production, that we can still be a pioneer for the entire industry in the technical development of a completely new format,” says Deutschmann.
