london post house Frontier Post is investing£500,000 to expand its Wells Street facility after record turnover results, writes Rick Dacey.
london post house Frontier Post is investing £500,000 to expand its Wells Street facility after record turnover results, writes Rick Dacey.

Frontier managing director and UK Post board nominee Neil Hatton is using the money to move the company into high-definition work.

The investment comes in the form of five new suites - four Avid XpressPro offline and one Avid DS Nitris HD - which will be housed across two new floors, one of which is to be developed as a state-of-the-art online area. Both floors are due to be operational by August.

Hatton believed the move into HD was inevitable because of an increasing demand from both US and UK broadcasters.

'All the signs are that in order to gain co-production finance, UK producers are going to have to start shooting HD. We want to be true to our company's name and be right

at the forefront of this market,' Hatton

said. 'We've just had our best ever quarterly figures and, for the past six months, we have been bursting at the seams with increasing demand for broadcast and corporate editing.'

A number of documentary series were turned down last year because of overcapacity, which has largely prompted the expansion.

Frontier said that it would be recruiting an established DS operator to drive the new Nitris but could not confirm who it would be. The four offline suites will be run as dry hire.

Recent work includes a DS job on Howard Goodall - 20th Century Greats for Tiger Aspect - due to air in early 2005 on Channel 4.

Topics