Australia's first CD manufacturing plant, operated by Disctronics Limited, went online in March 1987. The facility was located at Braeside, Victoria.
Most discs pressed at this plant during Disctronics ownership will usually contain the matrix "MADE BY DISCTRONICS B.......".
The 'B' refers to the location of the plant, as with Disctronics plants in other countries — such as: label (Anaheim, USA), label (Huntsville, USA), label (Southwater, UK).
In early February 1986, Kevin Donovan and Peter Massey formed Disctronics, Ltd. to manufacture compact audio discs. Construction was started on a plant near Moorabbin Airport to service the Australia and New Zealand market.
Matrices of releases pressed here generally looked like this: MADE BY DISCTRONICS B ✱✱ (Catalogue number) ✱✱ #(Pressing number) — example: 'release'.
Alternatively, the pressing number could be replaced by a 3 digit number, not preceded by a hash (eg. 201, 601).
There are some pressings which have also been recorded containing "label" in the matrix, as opposed to "MADE BY DISCTRONICS B", however these are scarce.
From March 1993 to approximately mid-1995 Disctronics B also created glass masters for the CDs pressed at Sony Music Australia. Such discs can be identified by (DB) in the matrix along with the characteristic Disctronics B matrix style and font. Where (DB) is part of the matrix, please enter the LCCN roles as follows:
LCCN — releases from March 1993 to mid-1995
Glass Mastered At – label
Pressed By – label
Example: '7002336'
Noting that it wasn't until roughly mid-1995, when SMEA became part of Sony's matrix strings in Australia, that Sony had their own glass mastering capabilities Down Under.
In late 1995, the Disctronics B plant was taken over by label. PMI was then acquired by label in August 2000, who operated the plant until SSD's takeover by label on 31 March 2002.
For a brief period after the introduction of SID codes in September 1994, but before the plant was taken over by PMI, it was assigned the mould code IFPI 46xx.
A small number of South African CD releases in the early 1990s, most notably several Pink Floyd-related albums, had their glass masters reused from the Australian releases, or were mastered in Australia at Braeside.