Audio facility Alchemy Mastering is investing£1.2m to relocate its business to the 29th floor of London's Centre Point building, writes Farah Jifri.
Audio facility Alchemy Mastering is investing £1.2m to relocate its business to the 29th floor of London's Centre Point building, writes Farah Jifri.

The move will take place in two phases and comes in response to growth across Alchemy's business areas including audio post-production.

'We were split between two buildings and we've been expanding for a while now and ran out of space,' said Alchemy co-owner and director Barry Grint.

The first phase of Alchemy's relocation plan is now in progress, with building work completed and the setting up of equipment well underway. Alchemy hopes to have its new site open by mid-March.

The facility has recruited 12 people, taking its total staff up to 25. Among them is Tim Lofts, former Saunders & Gordon facilities director and senior engineer, who has been brought on board to head the audio post side of the business. Patricia Slade-Bake, ex-facilities co-ordinator at S&G, has also joined the company.

In addition, mastering engineers Ray Staff, John Davis and Chris Potter have been taken on to boost the business further - all three are from the former Sony-owned Whitfield Street Studios.

'As we've got the Sony engineers, we're hoping that some of the Sony work will now come our way,' Grint told Broadcast.

New facilities at Centre Point include two new mastering studios centred around Sadie hard disk editors with Masalec mastering controllers and a selection of outboard EQ and compression kit. Equipment on the post-production side includes Sountracs '00' mixers, Pyramix Hard disk editing systems and Sonomics sound effects delivery system.

Both audio suites at the new site have been similarly equipped, with one specifically geared up for television and the other for radio and television commercials.

Phase two of Alchemy's expansion is the installation of another voice studio at the cost of around £200,000.

Alchemy's directors have put up £500,000 to pay for the move. Further funds were provided by Medialease, which has recently appointed Matt Vaughan as its new operations director.