A Dutch vinyl record company that promised to produce environment-friendly discs has gone bankrupt, owing thousands of euros to musicians and small labels.

Deepgrooves in Leeuwarden was declared bust last week, leaving dozens of people around the globe out of pocket. The company, launched in 2017, describes itself as the “greenest vinyl pressing plant in the world”.

Spanish musician Keenan Elman told Dutch News he has been waiting for a delivery of vinyl records since March and has been desperately trying to contact the company since then.

He is in touch with some 30 other people who have paid Deepgrooves for records that have never been delivered. “In total we are owed around €95,000 and that is a very conservative number, keeping in mind that we are individual artists, not record companies,” he said.

According to local paper Leeuwarder Courant, the company filed for bankruptcy itself. The workforce had already been cut from 30 to 15 people.

Curator Wybe Mollema is currently working on an initial report on the bankruptcy and the possibilities of a restart.

“The curator understands that customers have questions about the future of Deepgrooves and their orders,” a website statement said. “The curator cannot answer those questions at this time and hopes to be able to provide more clarity on this in the near future.”

Deepgrooves was launched at a time when vinyl was making a comeback. According to sector body NVPI, the Dutch spent some €38 million on vinyl records last year, a rise of €1 million on 2022.