A WORLD leading industrial training organisation is using its work across the globe to finance Tees Valley youngsters and ensure they have the skills needed to secure employment, as Business Editor Owen McAteer discovered.

TRAINING schemes being carried out thousands of miles away are providing vital support for apprentices in the North-East.

The TTE Technical Training Group, employs 100 and is responsible for more than 650 trainees at various stages of their apprenticeships at its Tees Valley headquarters .

Managing director Steve Grant showed me around a new facility that will bring all of its North-East operations onto its existing main site at South Bank in Middlesbrough.

It announced earlier this year it was closing its smaller training facility at Wilton and would invest £500,000 in upgrading workshops and equipment, a process which is nearing completion.

What many people might not realise is that its ability to offer training to youngsters in the oil and gas, process, manufacturing and engineering sectors, is in a large part dependent on commercial training work the organisation carries out in the Middle East and Africa.

Of around 200 youngsters taken on this year by the organisation providing skills around 60 had sponsor companies to pay for their training.

TTE, which has charitable status and is not-for-profit, receives just 20 per cent of its income from the Government.

The rest of its apprenticeship training it funds through commercial work, carrying out training for staff at oil and gas firms in far flung corners of the globe.

TTE managing director Steve Grant said: "When the recession came many companies drew their horns in.

"Around 60 of those joining us this year already have sponsorship from a company.

"We have a sponsorship team and what differentiates us from colleges is that we have massive links with the industry.

"All the guys working for us here have been in the industry and are known to them.

"Only about 20 per cent of our income comes from Government funding.

"In effect we run two businesses. We have a commercial high quality training company with set ups in Azerbaijan, Ghana, Equatorial Guinea, Oman, Nigeria and Dubai, amongst others.

"We are winning business to train workers in those countries and the profit from that goes into sustaining apprenticeships on Teesside."

It has just secured a five year extension to one of its largest contracts, a joint venture partnership formed in 2004 with Petrofac at Sangachal near Baku in Azerbaijan.

It employs 70 staff training upto 400 workers at any one time for BP and its production-sharing partners.

Mr Grant was also hopeful that the organisation would soon return to operating in Libya.

Having carried out work in the country for a number of years it had only recently established a dedicated training base there, TTE Libya, when the civil war broke out.

As reported in the Northern Echo last week it has since had talks with a British based representative of the National Transitional Council (NTC), which wants the firm to return to the region once the situation stabilises.

Mr Grant met the NTC members while attending a conference organised by UK Trade and Investment (UKTI) in London.

He said: "I got to speak to some of the senior people in the national Transitional Council.

"I was keen to make them aware of TTE and what we do.

"I explained what we did and they said that was key to rebuilding Libya and they would be keen to have a British company like ourselves involved.

"Certainly they were very keen to encourage British businesses to get back in and help rebuild the country, initially through the infrastructure."

Mr Grant believed that carrying out commercial training abroad benefited apprentices in the Tees Valley for more than financial reasons.

He said: "We have staff doing commercial training then coming back and training young people having learnt about the latest industry techniques and the apprentices respect them because they have been there and done it."

Youngsters taking training courses at the Middlesbrough centre are bussed in by TTE each day, coming from as far afield as Billingham and Hartlepool.

Mr Grant felt they benefited from getting used to a normal working day , 8am to 4pm, in an industrial environment, using the kind of equipment they will use in their working lives.

Examples of their work is seen by hundreds of commuters each day after second-year fabrication trainees produced a sculpture of a trolley bus as part of Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council's contribution to Britain in Bloom.

The creation has taken pride of place on the bull-ring roundabout on Birchington Avenue, in Grangetown, where trolley buses used to run in days gone by.

It is not only youngsters straight out of school or workers from firms across the world that the organisation is presently training.

It also carries out contracts for oil and gas engineering firm Wood Group PSN at South Bank, training former armed forces personnel for its offshore operations.

Mr Grant said: "They see it as ideal for the offshore industry, they are coming out of the armed forces and some have a great background in engineering, are disciplined and are used to travelling."

TTE also has an impressive client list including Cleveland Potash, Tata Steel Sabic, Lucite International, and Lotte Chemical UK, with plans to hold talks with SSI on apprentices once the Redcar facility is back up and running.

Lotte Chemical UK (LCUK), which took over the former Artenius plant at Wilton, near Redcar, in January last year, is a good example of TTE's ability to attract new support of its apprentice schemes.

In August the firm , a subsidiary of Korean firm KP Chemical, said it is sponsoring eight new apprentices, who would undertake training at TTE.

They will join nine apprentices LCUK provided sponsorship to a year ago, five of which lost their placements when 200 workers were made redundant after its previous owner, La Seda De Barcelona, placed the facility in administration, in July 2009.

Since it started sponsoring the apprentices, LCUK has given full-time positions as process technicians to two who completed their training. Mr Grant said: "That is fantastic for us and what I want to build on, looking for newcomers to get on board.

"We want young people to see apprenticeships as an alternative to university. There are no fees to pay back and it can lead to a satisfying jobs and in some cases they can go on and do degrees through their companies.

"They have a qualification under their belts and can travel the world if they want or stay on Teesside and work in the industries here.

"We hope the quality of the training we give is part of that and reflected in the quality of the young person who is confident, educated and knows how to work safely."