ABOUT 30 staff from the Ground Support Systems business of York-based Mechplant are quickly settling in under their new masters, VP plc of Harrogate.

Allaying fears that the £3.1 million acquisition was a hostile takeover, Neil Stothard, VP's finance director, said today: "Everyone who has joined us is made to feel welcome and the mood is very positive.

"You have to be in a very strong position to assume that you can just absorb a business without the key people who run it."

Mechplant, the plant hire subsidiary of Shepherd Building Group in Hospital Fields Road, York, decided to sell off its Ground Support Systems operation, which mostly involves hiring giant pneumatic equipment to shore up huge ground excavations.

The deal leaves about 90 staff to carry on Mechplant's hire business more related to the Shepherd group's core activities of construction, building and design services as well as project management. Mechplant's mechanical plant hire operations continue from hire centres in Newcastle upon Tyne, Rochdale, Wakefield and York.

A Mechplant spokesman said that compulsory redundancies were being avoided wherever possible "but there are a few people - one or two in an overlap of interests - with whom we are discussing the future."

Ground Support Systems is now being absorbed into the Groundforce ground support operations of VP plc, formerly Vibroplant, based in the former National Power headquarters at Central House in Otley Road, Harrogate.

The sale includes the air hammer, pile breaker and trench sheet hire business and the Basildon, Darlington and Northampton hire centre operations.

The Leigh hire centre in Lancashire has been closed and staff and equipment are being transferred to Harrogate.