About Columbia International

It all began in New York City in 1905 when a business called “Columbia Ribbon and Carbon Manufacturing Co Inc” was started making typewriter ribbons and carbon paper.

Our business was established in 1912 in London as importers into Europe of Columbia products.

Over the next couple of decades, we began manufacturing these products ourselves in the London area and “Columbia Ribbon Manufacturing” was born. The company finally settled in Sydenham in South East London in the 1930’s where we remain to this day.

We became a major supplier to markets across the globe of typewriter ribbons, carbon papers and a wide range of stationery and copying products until the early 1980’s, when technology was changing fast and the use of typewriters was declining.

In the 1960s, on behalf of the UK and US clearing banks, Columbia was called upon to develop the highly specialized Magnetic Ink Character Recognition (MICR) ribbons necessary for printing cheques and security documents to be electronically cleared.

Recognized as a world leader for the development of MICR and OCR quality ribbons, Columbia International remains one of a handful of manufacturers in this field.

In 1987 Columbia began the manufacture of Thermal Transfer Ribbons (TTR) for bar-coding and date-coding. Since then, we have established a strong business in the UK and Europe and offer a wide range of TTR, not only in black, but any other colour as well. Whatever the printer and whatever the application, we should to have the right ribbon.

As times change and technology advances, we continue to broaden our product range, with the help of our in-house development chemists, centred around our expertise in ink formulation design and coating technology.

We make all our products ourselves here in Sydenham and so you can be sure that everything we sell is entirely British made.