A GLOBAL stairflift company, founded by North-East two men in a garage, has been forced to stop its search for new workers - after receiving more than 500 applications for two jobs.

Meditek, in Newton Aycliffe, County Durham, had to take down an advertisement just days after bosses put it up, when interest soared for the vacant production line jobs.

The company, which sells thousands of stairlifts every year in the UK, US, Japan and Australia, wants two workers to make tracks and seats at its £1.1m 32,000sq ft factory, on Newton Aycliffe Business Park.

It has not yet filled the posts, but has stopped advertising the jobs until the company has looked at the applications.

Earlier this year, the firm moved from Fishburn, near Sedgefield, to Newton Aycliffe to develop its deluxe and budget stairlift models.

Steve Wilson, Meditek's operations manager, said the company had anticipated adding to its current 43-strong workforce, but did not expect such immediate high levels of interest in its jobs.

He said: “The new products were officially launched in January and we always expected them to be popular and for production to increase.

“But we didn’t think it would be this quick.

“We put the advertisement in the job centre and quickly had well over 500 interested people, so we had to take it down to canvass the existing applicants.

“It is incredibly encouraging to see so many people want to work with us, and it further cements the feeling that we made the right decision to move to Newton Aycliffe, and benefit from the area's reputation for traditional engineering-based manufacturing.”

Formed by directors Derek Nicholson and Kevin Strafford-Price in a Hartlepool garage in 1995, the company also has a US manufacturing base in North Carolina, which is overseen by Mr Strafford-Price.

The firm's new headquarters, which replaced a previous cluster of smaller industrial buildings in Fishburn, were officially opened by Paralympian Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson, and the company says it hopes to increase turnover to more than £10m.

Phil Rice, MediTek managing director, said: “We have a core base in County Durham and are constantly growing as a business.

“We did look at moving away, but the business has a heritage and a pedigree in the North-East, the core skills and workers are here, and we are very committed about keeping jobs in the region.”