Toronto’s creativePOST has purchased Eyes Post Group and has closed a deal, for an undisclosed amount, that will see the staff and equipment of its cross-town rival move into its Toronto offices.

The acquisition ‘has been in the works since September 2007,’ says creativePOST president Ken MacNeil, explaining that he bought Eyes to expand his company’s capabilities, without adding extra players to the already competitive Toronto post market.

‘Eyes Post generally does things that we don’t,’ such as film-to-video conversion, says MacNeil. ‘We did not get into that market before because we felt there was a lot of competition. Since creativePOST has doubled in size over the past three years, expanding by acquiring our competition seemed the next logical progression.’

MacNeil adds that creativePOST has been expanding its HD work, while Eyes Post has been expanding very aggressively into DVD authoring, including producing one of the first Blu-ray DVDs in the country.

There will be no layoffs, according to MacNeil. All of Eyes’ staff and equipment will move in with creativePOST, adding four Avid editing suites to its six.

‘This will give us six Avid HD suites,’ says MacNeil. Renovations to the 10,000-square-foot offices in Toronto have been underway for the past eight weeks.

The combined creativePOST/Eyes Post Group will be working on ‘some Blu-ray releases for Alliance,’ MacNeil tells Playback Daily, plus up to seven more TV series and two feature films.

‘I’ve been talking directly to some of Eyes Post’s customers, and they were actually very excited about having the two companies merged operationally,’ he replies. ‘They felt it would bring together more resources.’

The deal follows other shakeups in the post-production scene. Last week, Vancouver’s Rainmaker sold its post and effects divisions to Deluxe, while Frantic Films’ VFX business was picked up by international player Prime Focus.