SANYO staff at Newton Aycliffe, County Durham, and Thornaby, Teesside, who are due to lose their jobs when the plants close later this year, are receiving help to find new work.

Specialist careers advisors from ICM Career Care have been drafted in to the microwave oven manufacturing plants to see how they can help the 300 staff, from shop floor to senior management posts, to find new jobs.

ICM is due to open a job shop, on site at the Newton Aycliffe plant on Monday, August 20.

The job shop will be open each working day and is available to everyone from both sites for access to careers counselling and job search facilities.

Work has already begun helping employees to prepare CVs, work on interview techniques and giving advice on career direction.

Sheila Bower, from ICM, said: "Our objective is to get everyone into a new job before the factories close later this year.

"The Job Shop will provide information on job vacancies from a national database as well as local employment opportunities."

A centre manager will lead a support team of careers advisors, while workstations will enable users to search online for vacancies.

ICM Career Care, based in Leeds, has been delivering career management and recruitment services from shop floor workers to boardroom level for major public and private companies for the past 20 years.

About 284 people are employed at the Newton Aycliffe plant, with 31 at its sister operation in Thornaby.

Both are due to close on November 30, with production ending on November 2.

Talks are currently being held with an unnamed European consortium in a bid to take over the running of the Newton Aycliffe plant as a going concern.

The buy-out could save about one third of the workforce, but an agreement needs to be reached by the end of this month for any deal to go ahead. The Thornaby plant would not be included in the buy-out.

Japanese electronics firm Sanyo signalled its intention to pull out of manufacturing in the UK after it announced that the production of microwave ovens was no longer viable.