It’s called Holiday Records, but for those working on the frontlines of the turntable resurgence, there’s barely been time for one.

Behind a glass door on Auckland’s Wellesley Street, secrets are being kept. Like Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory, a boiler gurgles mysteriously, steam hisses sporadically, and large machinery whizzes, whirs, pumps and pounds. At Holiday Records, they’re making magic: vinyl records, those sleek back discs that are suddenly in shockingly high demand. 

“We live it and breathe it,” says one staff member at New Zealand’s only vinyl pressing plant. He’s standing in front of a pile of freshly pressed records, holding each up to the light, checking it over for imperfections. Once it’s approved, it will be slipped into a protective sleeve, then a cover, shrinkwrapped and boxed, waiting to be purchased and played on a turntable at home. 

The problem? On a recent Wednesday morning, the album in question was from a major artist signed to the famed Seattle label Subpop, one so hot off the press it’s not due for release for another three months. A perk of a job like this is getting to hear highly anticipated albums earlier than others. After all, it counts as quality control.

Could The Spinoff perhaps have an early listen? Joel Woods, who runs New Zealand’s only vinyl pressing plant with his friend Ben Wallace, shakes his head.

“This,” he says, mega ironically, “is off the record.”

Woods and Wallace can be found at their noisy inner city pressing plant most days, working at the coal face of the vinyl resurgence. Thanks to an idea they had three years ago coming to fruition in a big way, business is booming, expansion plans are in full swing, and they, along with their two other full-time staff members, are no longer able to live up to their name. “We should have called it Anti-Holiday records,” jokes Wallace.

Thanks to a six-month backlog of orders, the fact they’re New Zealand’s only pressing plant, and one of just three across Australasia, Holiday Records is at capacity. To pump out up to 1300 records a day, staff can be found there six days a week from 6.30am until close to midnight. It’s like running a cafe, “and a restaurant,” jokes Wallace. A wait list six months long means they’ll soon move to seven days a week to keep up with demand. 

They’re not done yet. By the end of the year, things are about to get even more crammed on their central city site. A second custom-built press will arrive from Toronto, meaning that, with twice the staff, they’ll be able to double their output. By then, their small site will be at capacity. “We’re going to take over the whole carpark,” says Woods. “Or we’re eyeing up a new location.” 

All this work means Woods and Wallace have been forced to keep a few secrets lately. Demand from record labels for their services means they’re entrusted with new albums from major artists. At the moment, they’re working through back catalogues for Lorde, Johnny Cash, Crowded House and Tame Impala — albums that have been out of print and hard to get for months.

Being able to press records from their favourite artists or listen to albums ahead of a release date is a major perk of their job. Being able to go on holiday is not: Woods and Wallace were only recently able to take their first break since they opened, closing for two weeks over Christmas. They don’t know when their next one might be.

It hasn’t always been this way. Holiday Records began when Wallace’s old Hawke’s Bay folk band tried, and failed, to get an album pressed on vinyl. No one in New Zealand could do it. “It was like, ‘Why isn’t there one here?’,” says Wallace. With Woods, the pair investigated what it would take to open a pressing plant, talking to other owners around the world and flying to Toronto, Canada, for training.

They realised it could be done, but it was a huge gamble. They had no experience, and didn’t know anyone else here who did. But they’d seen vinyl’s comeback first-hand. “We started to hear anecdotes of people going to dinner parties and taking records instead of wine,” says Wallace, “or of vinyl being given as gifts at weddings”.

Vinyl seemed to be on the rise. Their fortunes did not, and the bank didn’t see their business dreams in quite the same light. “We thought it was a bonus that there were no competitors,” says Wallace. Yet the lack of similar business models made banks sceptical. “They were like, ‘Why are you the only one?’ … but we got it in the end.”

That first year was rough. Records labels didn’t yet trust them, and they had to hustle for orders. Equipment sometimes broke down, a tiny hydraulic spring putting them out of action for weeks. When you’ve only got one press, time equals money. “There were some really tough moments,” admits Wallace. Yet they had no back-up plan. “Because of the gravity of it, you’ve got to make it plan A, B and C, and make it work.”

They – ahem – pressed on, focusing on making quality control as high as it could be. They also emphasised making things as environmentally friendly as possible, with PVC offcuts recycled as piping, and cooling water being re-used. And they learnt how to fix breakdowns themselves, stocking up on spare parts. News spread, orders got bigger. A request for 2000 Six60 records pushed Woods and Wallace to their limit. “It took us over two weeks,”says Wallace. “We had to press and  sleeve and shrinkwrap everything ourselves.”

Now, they’ve sped up, and everything is trending up. Since April last year, vinyl’s rise has been “exponential,” says Wallace. Up to 15 requests a day land in their inbox from acts or labels looking to get their vinyl moved up the supply chain. Overseas, wait times can be a year or more. Holiday Records is slightly more flexible: last year, when Ladyhawke’s vinyl pressing plans for her new album fell through, Holiday Records answered an SOS call and managed to slip her album in, completing a complicated marbled vinyl request.

Is it a fad? Will vinyl fade away like CDs and DVDs? They don’t think so. “Vinyl has just overtaken CDs (in sales),” says Woods. “It’s booming everywhere.” Wallace, who has kept rubber gloves on his hands throughout our interview, needs to get back to work. “It’s been astronomical,” he says. “We’re pressing far more than we ever thought we would be.”

Read more: ‘People froth it’: Inside the craze for Aotearoa’s most sought-after record

Alex Casey goes on a frosty pilgrimage to meet the people making the ice that has cooled your chilly bins all summer long. 

It is a stinking hot summer morning in Manurewa and we are in a winter wonderland. The thick layer of flaky, pristine snow is already approaching chest height, with a lone man in a white onesie tending to it as it gracefully falls from twinkling frosted pipes in the ceiling. Bruce Saifiti, operations manager at Polar Ice, reaches through the window and picks up a cloudy, jagged shard, holding it towards the light like a gemologist inspecting a precious stone. 

“See that? Now that’s a good flake of ice.” 

No phrase is more evocative of a New Zealand summer than “party ice”. Party. Ice. Nothing compares to the energy of the word “party” followed by the slithering cool of the word “ice”, eliciting both a feeling of unquenchable thirst and unshakeable potential. Across the country, we’ve raced across hot concrete, a blue or crystal clear sack of ice in each hand, gleeful barefoot burglars ready to embrace the opportunities of drinks on the deck, of camping cheese and crackers, and of fresh fish caught straight from the sea. 

Given that we’ve seen both the hottest temperatures on record, and the second summer where New Zealanders haven’t been easily allowed to leave the country, it is no surprise that the last month has been huge for the ice industry in New Zealand. “Summer comes and you just… wooosh,” Saifiti says from his office, gesturing not unlike Elsa creating an icy kingdom in Frozen. In the cubicle next to him, a humorous card blu-tacked to the wall features two penguins sitting at a bar in Antarctica. “What do you mean you’ve run out of ice?” one of them asks.  

After experiencing burnout from 35 years in international logistics, Saifiti was looking for something more chill when he discovered the ice industry. He started in the role in June last year, and it was a quiet introduction. “Winter was a really tough time for the industry,” he says. “The restaurants were all down with Covid, we were still selling to petrol stations and food manufacturers but there were all the roadblocks and things like that. No one buys ice, you know? No one buys ice.” 

When lockdown lifted and the days got longer, Saifiti says sales went “ballistic” at Polar Ice. Producing party ice, salt ice and artisanal cocktail cubes for the Auckland region, the small team of 12 found themselves working non-stop until Christmas without a day off. Even on Christmas Day, demand was so high that staff came in at 2am and didn’t leave until mid morning. “It was hectic,” Saifiti says, shaking his head. 

Further down the country, it was the same story. Hannah Fox at Southern Ice in Christchurch says although she and her partner began storing ice for summer in September in giant offsite freezers, they were still “stunned possums” when the Christmas rush for ice began. “We both started at four in the morning on Christmas Day. Our kids couldn’t open their Christmas presents until the afternoon when we got home,” she says over the phone. “Honestly, it’s been crazy, it was going out the door as fast as we were making it.”

It’s the “making it” part that many people probably don’t consider when they’re smashing their frozen baggie against the bach steps in the blazing sun. At Polar Ice in Manurewa, we don hairnets and head into the factory, under strict instructions to not take any pictures. Perhaps I was about to find several fur-wearing blokes traveling from Antarctica, or just endless rows and rows of dinky Kmart ice cube trays? Kristoff? Sven? Are you in there? 

Through the plastic curtain there were fewer laser lights in the party ice room than expected, but just as wet and sticky a floor. We were met with a giant metal tub the size of a one bedroom unit that fills up with party ice twice a day, all generated from three curly looking blue machines on the roof of the building next to a sign that says “don’t fucken touch”. I ask what goes into the machines in order to make the ice. “It’s basically just… water,” Saifiti laughs. I don’t know what I was expecting him to say. 

The metric shit tonne of party ice is kept moving by an enormous set of gnashing metal teeth, which sends the ice down a chute, up another chute, and down into the automated bagging machine. Around the corner is the room that makes salt ice, delicate crushed flakes that are a favourite of fishing fans for their slow melting time. In winter, truckfuls of it also finds their way to schools and kindergartens, tipping the salty snow onto the ground for kids to play in. “Snowman day or whatever,” Saifiti laughs. 

When it comes to the bread and butter of ice – the 3kg bag of party ice – you’d be surprised at the variations in quality, Saifiti says. “I have to say, when I look at our competitors’ ice… we make really good ice.” What makes a good piece of ice? “You want a solid piece and you want that perfect pinhole through the middle” he says, poking his pointer finger on one hand through an ‘O’ shape made with the other, in what a more juvenile person than me might interpret as a gesture for sex. “Some of our competitors… their ice is much shorter, sort of small chunky little bits,” he says, shaking his head.  

Although petrol stations, supermarkets and dairies are to be expected party ice buyers, Fox has also seen their ice turn up in surprising places in the South Island, thanks to the likes of Wim Hof and Art Green. “People run these wellness retreats and they order quite a lot of our ice for their ice baths,” she laughs. Local sports teams will also use mixtures of party and salt ice for the ideal injury recovery bath, and a man with an electric food grade chainsaw visits to sculpt chandeliers and swans for weddings and Queenstown ice bars in winter. 

Both Saifiti and Fox say the rush has slowed down, but things are expected to pick up again in February. Then, in a few months when a chill sets in the air across the country, they will finally get a much-deserved break. Unable to take his caravan up to Pakiri this year because he’s been working for weeks straight, Saifiti is looking forward to heading home to do some odd jobs. “I don’t think people realise that when they are all off enjoying their summer holidays, we are working really hard to get ice out there to them,” says Fox. 

“There’s no such thing as a summer holiday for us, but that’s fine because we love skiing,” she adds. “We’re winter people.”