AN engineering company that cut its workforce by 209 when work dried up has won two contracts worth £1.2m.

Cleveland Bridge's Darlington fabrication facility will produce plate girders for the Encana Buzzard Field Development.

The announcement will come as a blow to those employees about to lose their jobs, but the company said it had already taken the two contracts into consideration during its cost-cutting review.

The latest work is in the Outer Moray Firth, where the Buzzard Development Project is one of the most significant oil finds in the North Sea.

The first contract is to make 195 plate girders for Burntisland Fabricators, based near Fife, in Scotland, which will make up part of the well head deck. The second is to make 327 plate girders for Heerema Hartlepool Ltd for inclusion on the utilities module.

Brian Rogan, deputy managing director, said: "Cleveland Bridge has recently been strengthening its experience in offshore fabrication including work on BP Clair and Bonga Field FPSO for Amec Offshore.

"These new projects further illustrate our abilities and offer up to 25,000 man-hours of work for the Darlington plant between now and September.

"We would hope that the development of this work will lead to more projects in the very near future, bringing further consolidation of this area of the business."

The Buzzard Field is in the central North Sea, about 100km north-east of Aberdeen and 55km from the nearest landfall at Peterhead.

Cleveland Bridge hit the headlines in February when it announced staffing levels were to be cut by 240. Work by the GMB union reduced that figure to 209.

A company spokesperson last night said the latest contract announcement would not change that position.

"This work is good news because it is reconfirming work that is coming back into the plant.

"But these two contracts were actually in the pipeline when the consultation exercise was going on.

"The new work consilidates the jobs that were there. Unfortunately, at the moment there are no major contracts in the offing, but smaller contracts like this are very important to the company."