CONCERNS were growing last night over the future of an engineering firm, as rumours swept the site that its parent company was willing to sell to the highest bidder.

Darchem Honeycomb Products is part of the Scottish Weir Group which earlier this year announced plans to divest to its core engineering business.

Workers at the factory believe the business at Stillington, near Stockton, is on the market, and there is a real threat of redundancies among the 500 strong workforce.

But MD, John Menzies, dismissed any talk of job losses - for the time being at least.

He said: "There is no threat to jobs at the present time."

Although job losses were discounted, the Weir Group confirmed they planned to offload their non-core operations.

A spokesman for Glasgow -based Weir said: "We have never revealed publicly those businesses which maybe for sale as part of our divestment programme as we regard that information as commercially confidential.

"We have no plans to start naming companies now."

In the firm's recent annual report, chairman Sir Ron Garrick said: "We are convinced our future success will come from focusing even more on our strengths and concentrating our resources on those areas of the business where we can establish a significant market position which will lead to greater growth.

"Inevitably those businesses where we can't achieve such positions are likely to be worth more to an outside party and will be considered for divestment."

The Stillington factory appears at present to come into the latter category.

Earlier this year the company clinched orders worth £1m to help build five state-of-the-art wind tunnels for the automotive and aerospace industries, confirming it planned to increase its wind tunnel business in 2000, investing in new processes that will offer even better accuracy. Only last year the Arrows Formula One team used Darchem materials to insulate the engines in its cars.