Company History

Classical record label Nimbus Records moved to the Wyastone Leys Estate (pictured right) and started LP production for their own recordings in 1977. They quickly gained a reputation for making high quality vinyl pressings, and started to offer a custom pressing service soon afterwards. When the CD format was launched, Nimbus built the first CD factory in the UK, again on the Wyastone Leys Estate, and during the next years this business expanded rapidly until Nimbus Manufacturing had additional CD plants in Cwmbran and in Charlottesville, Virginia, USA. During this time Nimbus also won the Queen's Award for Technological Achievement.

From 1987 to 1992 Robert Maxwell was a major shareholder of the company, but when his business empire collapsed the CD manufacturing side of Nimbus was sold off and the original founders of the business regained control of both the record label and the intellectual property which had been developed to form the core of the manufacturing business. A new enterprise was started, Nimbus Technology & Engineering, to manufacture and sell the CD laser mastering equipment, which until that time had only been used in Nimbus factories, to the rest of the CD industry.

Over the course of the next nine years this business grew to be the leading supplier of laser mastering equipment. Nimbus was closely involved in the development of the DVD format as a strategic partner of Toshiba and Time Warner, and for several years was the dominant supplier of DVD mastering equipment. Once again the company won a Queen's Award, this time for Export Achievement. In 2001 the optical disc manufacturing equipment industry went through some major restructuring, and a strategic decision was taken to sell Nimbus Technology & Engieering to a Swiss company with interests in the same industry, Unaxis AG.

In 2002 the founders of Nimbus Records decided to redirect their efforts and concentrate on the record label and the management of the Wyastone Concert Hall under a new company name, Wyastone Estate Ltd. They established systems to manufacture efficiently small runs of Nimbus Records titles which were both more cost effective and more appropriate for that type and size of organisation, and since 2002 have made more than 2.8 million discs in this way.

The staff of Wyastone Estate Ltd. collectively has over a century of experience of the CD industry, running a record label, managing manufacturing operations and designing, building and marketing manufacturing equipment.

The information contained in this website was correct at the time of publication - last updated December 2006.