MADE in Ryedale, operated thousands of metres below the oceans, is a device that will one day save the lives of stricken, water- entombed submariners.

The LR5 built by Perry Slingsby Systems (PSS) of Kirkbymoorside nearly did just that. The undersea rescue vehicle was dispatched to the Barents Sea in August 2000 to try to rescue the 118 crew members trapped on the Russian nuclear submarine Kursk.

But by the time the Russian authorities agreed to the possibility it was too late to attach itself to the sub's escape hatch with a hemispherical, pressure-resisting transfer skirt , then implant life support systems and ferry the men to safety. All the occupants were already dead.

Sadly, such disasters will happen again. The certainty of that is underlined by two separate contracts just awarded to PSS for the design and manufacture of submarine rescue systems

One of them is a £10 million deal with Rolls Royce to deliver a rescue system for NATO which will replace the existing system delivered by the company when it was Slingsby Engineering 25 years ago.

The other is an £8 million order from an overseas Navy about which PSS must remain tight-lipped because it is classified.

As the 91 staff work flat out at the 54,000 sq ft plant, on a 2.5-acre site, wiring, machining, welding and hyperbaric testing (with the help of a 2,400-metre deep testing pool), forecasters predict that the total £11.5 million in sales this year will leap to £18.2 million by 2006 with gross margins doubling to £4 million. Is it any wonder that the firm, which also manufactures underwater tooling and control systems, is pitching for the Growth Business of the Year title?

The firm has been a pioneer in special subsea systems development for more than 40 years, obtaining leading market positions in the oil and gas industries as well as telecommunications, defence and other related markets.

It is a descendant of the still highly- successful Slingsby Aviation set up by Fred Slingsby in the 1930s.

Now PSS is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Technip, a Paris-based engineering and construction group and operates from two sites, one in Jupiter, Florida, US, and the other at Kirkbymoorside.

Apart from reliable manned submersible systems, the company also engineers and makes remotely-operated vehicles, or ROVs, cable and pipeline burial systems.

Updated: 09:32 Tuesday, July 27, 2004