INDUSTRY. SHINFIELD STUDIOS
Shinfield Studios is going to rival the likes of Pinewood, Shepperton and Leavesden – by serving the streaming fraternity Where streams come true
WORDS. Robert Shepherd IMAGES. Various
W hen Nick Smith and his team agreed to sell Pinewood Studios to Aermont Capital in a £323m deal in 2016, it wasn’t because he wanted to take a break from the industry. In fact, it was quite the opposite, there was a gap in the market that he was ready to exploit. “I don’t want to blow smoke anywhere, but at the time I was one of the few people who realised there’s a massive supply and demand imbalance,” explains Smith, former commercial director of Pinewood Group Ltd and current managing director of Shinfield Studios. “We sold Pinewood because it was full, and I could see the likes of Netflix, Apple and Amazon coming over the hill – so I thought, ‘Where are they going to go?’ For me, it was just a simple economics decision – supply and demand. There has to be demand for space, so that’s where the idea of Shinfield came from. Aermont has deeper pockets than us, so the
44. DEFINITIONMAGAZINE.COM
Powered by FlippingBook