AN engineering company is recruiting 40 skilled staff as part of a strategy  to make its North-East offices a centre for global engineering operations. 

Amec has launched the recruitment drive to grow its 120-strong engineering team in Darlington. The Lingfield Point business park site, which employs a total of 420 workers, will become the firm's international centre for engineering. The move follows the FTSE 100 company winning six major contracts in the oil, gas and clean energy sectors - five of them based in the UK.

The announcement is a futher boost for Darlington's engineering industry following confirmation on Monday that the sale of Whessoe Projects to Samsung C&T had safeguarded the future of the historic business and would lead to about 100 new jobs being created.  

In October, Amec moved into Lingfield Point from the nearby Yarm Road Industrial Estate where its lease had expired. Nicola Mason, the operations director at Amec in Darlington, said: "This is really exciting news. The skills and experience of our workforce has helped us to beat some very tough competition to win these contracts. This region has a strong engineering history and we are delighted to be bringing these high quality jobs to Darlington.

"We have settled in well to Lingfield Point. One of the key reasons behind us moving here was that we would have the space to expand. Amec is a very ambitious company and we hope to be adding more staff if we win additional contracts later this year. We are very committed to Darlington. The legacy of the Tees Valley engineering and chemical process industries means that this area has a lot of people with the type of skills we need so we don't expect to have any problems finding the high calibre of staff we need."    

Amec designs and builds infrastructure works in the oil and gas, mining and  energy sectors. It employs about 40 staff at offices in Wynyard, near Billingham.

The boom in oil and gas projects helped the company increase its profits by more than a quarter last year. Pre-tax profit also rose, from £259m to £263m, but overall profit for the period was down to £217m from £232m. A surge in revenue from oil and gas activity in regions such as the Middle East and Gulf of Mexico boosted performance.