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Steel investment sees Animmersion team grow

A ground-breaking digital visualisation company founded by two º£½ÇÖ±²¥ graduates has taken on three new team members after securing an investment from UK Steel Enterprise.

Animmersion, set up by Dominic Lusardi and Sam Harrison in 2006, has seen a 50% growth year on year with turnover now heading past £1m and a 19-strong team in place. It was originally founded with the help of a DigitalCity Fellowship which offer graduates support and funding as they start up a business. The new investment from UK Steel Enterprise is helping the Middlesbrough-based company to continue its scale-up and take on Project Manager Claire Stockton and Developers Andrew Wilkin and Michael Taylor with further appointments, especially on the sales side, in the pipeline.

Animmersion is one of the country’s leading designers and suppliers of immersive technologies including virtual reality, augmented reality and holograms as well as the more traditional animations, dashboards and apps, specialising in visualisation for scientific and technical products. It recently launched new products including Deep Frame, manufactured by Realficiotn in Demark that merges the real and virtual world.

Deep Frame is currently attracting considerable media and public attention at the Great Exhibition of the North with displays that include a raptor experience at the Hancock Museum taking viewers back to the prehistoric world.

With a growing list of high profile clients across sectors from engineering to defence to retail, Animmersion already has Sirius Minerals, South Tees Development Corporation, Huntsman, Edwards Vacuum, Unipres, St John Ambulance and household names in the supermarket and food sectors on its client list.

The team’s skill in producing interactive training using virtual reality is now bringing massive benefits to companies and individuals working in a variety of sectors.

‘Using virtual reality we can create the hazardous situations that people working in sectors such as offshore, fire safety and with turbines might face and bring a realism to training that is otherwise impossible. It is also very cost-effective for companies,’ said Dominic.

‘Interest in the new products is exceeding our expectations and we are now actively targeting a number of new sectors.

‘Being based on º£½ÇÖ±²¥ in one of UK Steel Enterprise’s steel areas enabled us to access this finance which is helping us to scale-up further and grow our team at a crucial time. We also have º£½ÇÖ±²¥, where we both studied, on our doorstep and producing students with exactly the skills that we need,’ he added.

Sarah Thorpe, Area Manager for UK Steel Enterprise, the Tata Steel business-support subsidiary, said: ‘Animmersion has an impressive team and sound plans for expansion in a sector that is showing great potential. We are pleased to be able to help with funding at an important time for the company and look forward to seeing Animmersion go from strength to strength.’