Temple Street makes Industrial investment

Orphan Black studio Temple Street Productions has bought into children’s animation company Industrial Brothers.

This will see Canada-based Temple Street taking a “significant minority interest” in Industrial, and comes after Fairfax Financial put funding into the animation house earlier this year.

Toronto-based Industrial is behind preschool series such as Disney Jr.’s Yup Yups, CBC’s , and YouTube exclusive Gummandos. Matthew Fernandes, Arthur Spanos and Ryan Lussing founded the company in 2009.

For Temple Street, the move comes soon after it hired Jon Rutherford to launch a distribution arm, which will now support Industrial in sales, merchandising and licensing.

Further to that, Temple Street’s in-house digital unit, Temple Street Media Ventures, will partner with Industrial on content development and on interactive, gaming and app projects.

“Industrial Brothers is one of North America’s premier creative animation companies with a clear track record for engaging the much sought-after children’s audience, creating premium digital and television series,” said Temple Street managing director John Young.

“This investment continues our forward-looking approach to growth across all categories while expanding our distribution opportunities. We are delighted to be working with Matthew and Arthur and the entire team at Industrial Brothers.”

“Our ambition has always been to create top quality programming for the marketplace and this aligns us perfectly with the vision and values of Temple Street,” said Fernandes, Industrial’s president and creative director.

“The new partnership gives us access to the expertise of Temple Street and allows us to continue to create and produce our brand of content well into the future.”