EDIT
I’ve managed to solve this.
$image = get_term_meta( $brands->term_id, 'image', true ); returns the brand image link and the ID like https:// domain.com/image.jpg,11123 so I’ve used the following
$imagestring = implode(',', $image);
$imagestring = preg_replace('/^([^,]*).*$/', '$1', $imagestring);