A BURGEONING long-service club in East Cleveland has 23 new members.

Twenty of the new recruits to the Cleveland Potash 25-year club, along with families and friends, gathered recently to receive inscribed gold watches from company chairman Mr Keith Jackson.

Together with three others who were not able to be at the ceremony, they bring the total membership to 170.

This is equal to 20pc of the workforce at Boulby mine and the cumulative years of service is a massive 4,250.

Thanking the new members for their loyalty, Mr Jackson said spending 25 years with the same firm was an important milestone in anyone's career.

For 170 employees to achieve it was nothing short of remarkable, he said.

The new members are: Les Bagley (Staithes), Brian Cannings (Malton), Eddie Clyburn (Rosedale), Bob Featherstone, Keith Pattinson, Ian Pearce and Charles Walker (Brotton), Dick Goodchild (Saltburn), Colin Harris (Easington), Mike Hodgson and Ian Wrigley (Skelton), Malcolm Lowe and Roy Spence (Guisborough), Brian Marsden (Thornaby), Dave Sivills, Ted Ward and Eric Wilson (Loftus), John Stelling (Skinningrove), Paul Suggett (Saltburn), Robin Sedman (Glaisdale) Graham Wink, Robert Gibson and Andrew Pearson (Whitby).