Garrod and Lofthouse

Garrod and Lofthouse were a British printing company based in Chaldon Road, Caterham, Surrey, who manufactured record sleeves.[1][2] In 1963, the company patented the design for Two-Piece sleeves that were used in the UK.[3]

The advantage of these sleeves, in the days of single colour printing, was that the four-colour front was printed on a separate sheet to the single colour back and the two halves were then glued together as the sleeve was fabricated. This allowed half the number of passes through a printing press to produce the front cover, and a quarter for the monochrome backs. This gave a reduction in print costs of 37.5%. As the two fronts could be laminated together, it halved the amount of laminating time.

Because of these cost reductions the company were contracted to print sleeves for 90% of all EMI affiliated labels volume on the basis that they never produced a sleeve for Decca Records, their only major competitor. They are therefore credited on all original LP releases of the Beatles, including Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.[4]

Garrod and Lofthouse printed for most UK record companies outside Decca, and manufactured covers for France through a subsidiary Imprimerie du Nord. They were given special permission to press the Rolling Stones' Beggars Banquet (one of the first gatefold sleeves) and Sticky Fingers (manufactured with a metal zip glued down the front), as Decca's in-house staff could not manage the complex production to the volume required.

The company was liquidated in 1988,[5] by which time sleeve manufacturing could be done by any generic process, and cassette and compact disc sleeves did not require carboard printing.