Seven of the eight staff employed by Ice, including former managing director Peter Bryant, have been taken on by Aimimage to work in the newly-formed hire company, which will trade as ICE.

ICE will continue to operate from Ice Film Equipment’s Kings Cross location, although Aimimage commercial manager Atif Ghani said the companies are “likely to converge over the next two years.”

Ghani explained that given the companies’ offices were only a mile apart, the deal was something of an “intuitive” decision. He also said that Ice has recently “made moves into tapeless [film technology] and so we see overlap with our client bases. High-quality film lenses have become very important for the high-definition digital capture market and Ice has a good selection.”