Heyworth is chairman of the offline facility that he and de Wolff set up in 1996. The duo have taken on a raft of staff, including a trio from Molinare, to set up a 7,000 sq ft digital online facility in London's D'Arblay Street.
Molinare commercial director Ant Hayward has been brought in as Fusion's facilities director and he is joined by senior editor Jonathan Field and colourist Tim O'Brien. They will work alongside former colleague Richard Wilding who was head of editing at Molinare until last September, when he was one of 16 people made redundant.
Steve Cookman, former Tele-Cine head of audio, joins Hayward and Wilding on the board as director of audio and Clear Cut dubbing mixer Alan Russell is also part of the team.
De Wolff said: 'This is the biggest thing since Nicky and Vikki left Molinare to set up The Farm. In fact, most of us have at some point worked for Molinare - we all have a lot to be grateful to it [Molinare] for.'
Molinare managing director Martin Anderson said: 'We are going to achieve our plans with or without [them]? it's an irritant but no more than that.'
Fusion will be equipped with six new suites including a Sony linear editing suite, a Pandora Pixi Platinum grading suite, two Symphonys and two DigiDesign Pro Tools dubbing suites with tracklay and voice-over rooms providing high-end broadcast and Dolby 5.1 sound mixing facilities. De Wolff said the facility would also be the first in Europe to use Sonomics - a web-based sound effects server - and the first in Soho to include Aston's Blue character generator.
He added, there was 'no better time' to start the new business, which has been funded with a mix of lease funding from Fineline, bank and private finance. 'Now is a good time to borrow money, there is only one way to go in the market and that is up. We are just coming out of recession.'
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