VFX company receives investment from the Business Growth Fund.

Ivan-Dunleavy

Ivan Dunleavy has joined Oscar-winning VFX company Milk as the non-executive chairman.

The former CEO of Pinewood Group has been hired to manage the growth of the company after 17 years of experience as Pinewood’s CEO.

In addition, Milk has received an investment of £2m from the Business Growth Fund (BGF) which the company will use to expand its studios, invest in new technical equipment and add staff.

Milk has recently worked on the likes of Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them and Ben Wheatley’s Free Fire.

It is currently in production on Alex Garland’s Annihilation, Kingsman 2, TV anthology series Electric Dreams and Doctor Who series 10, among others.

Private SME-backer BGF was established in 2011 and is funded by five of the UK’s banking groups – Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds, RBS and Standard Chartered.

“Our new partnership with BGF and the appointment of Ivan Dunleavy as chairman will help us to deliver the most challenging and creative visual effects work for the global feature film, high end television and emerging digital content markets,” commented Milk’s CEO, Will Cohen.

Dunleavy added: “The team at Milk, led by Will Cohen, has done a fantastic job at building the business and establishing its credentials in the globally competitive VFX marketplace. I look forward to working with them and BGF in realising the next stage of our exciting plan to develop the Milk brand even further, at a time when audiences on all channels and platforms expect quality creative content.”

The investment was led for BGF by Chris Hodges, George Tsangarides and Thomas McDonnell.