Wales Deals Stephen Farrell

An Oscar-winning independent visual effects (VFX) company with a base in Cardiff, whose credits include Doctor Who, Sherlock and Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them, has secured a £2m investment from the Business Growth Fund (BGF).

Milk Visual Effects was founded by five VFX supervisors and producers in 2013, including current chief executive Will Cohen. It now employs 150 staff across its sites in London and Cardiff.

The studio has won awards for its work, including three consecutive BAFTA Television Craft awards for Doctor Who (in 2014 and 2015) and critically acclaimed BBC drama Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (in 2016).

Milk won an Emmy in 2016 for work on the BBC drama Sherlock, and in 2016 co-founder Sara Bennett won an Oscar for her work on the film Ex-Machina in the Best VFX category.

Other recent credits have included the film Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them for Warner Bros, The Martian (20th Century Fox) and The Divergent Series: Insurgent (Lionsgate/Summit).

In addition to the initial £2m investment, BGF also introduced Will Cohen and his management team to Ivan Dunleavy, the former chief executive of Pinewood Group, who will join Milk VFX as the non-executive chairman.

Cohen said: "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.

"We look forward to building on our success over the last four years - which is testament to the dedication and expertise of our team at Milk. It's a wonderful way to begin our fifth year in business."

Gavin Petken, regional director at BGF, added: "Will and the team have an outstanding reputation for delivering innovative, ground breaking visual effects and have cultivated valuable and strategic commercial relationships. They have scaled the business well, and we are excited to see our investment help accelerate their growth even further."

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