The strangest thing about EMI’s former record factory in Hayes, west London, is not that it has been lying derelict for years, but that in a ramshackle outbuilding once occupied by the packing and shipping department, 11 of the 120 record presses that immortalised the music of groups such as The Beatles and Pink Floyd are again in full production, turning out singles and LPs.

The presses are no longer owned by EMI but by a small, independent company called Portalspace Records, which acquired the factory and the last 20 surviving machines when EMI pulled out of record pressing in 2000. On a grey January afternoon, one machine was pressing copies of the classic punk album Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols, re-released in a special 30th anniversary edition by Virgin Records, an EMI label, last autumn. Others were stamping out new singles with titles such as No Sale No I.D. by The Emperor Machine and Worry About It Later (Switch Remix) by The Futureheads.