A NEW high tech company has been lured to York - right on cue.

York Inward Investment Board has smoothed the path for the arrival in the city of wd39Ltd from Wakefield, designers of the website www.snookernet.com - a lucky break given the announcement that the UK Snooker Championship is to be played at York's Barbican Centre in December.

The company was a department of Wakefield-based Networking Solutions, but David Lambert, managing director led a separate management buyout and switched to new premises in Heworth.

Now he and creative director Jonathan Kendall are part of a team of five but envisage employing another 20 people over the next 18 months, mainly graduate programmers.

Mr Lambert said the omens were good when after he moved the new venue for the snooker championships in York was announced. "wd39 developed snookernet as a pilot e-commerce project back in August 1999 and it quickly became the most visited snooker site in the world. We've sold chalk to Australia, cues to Malaya and snooker products to most countries of the world."

He added: "Snookernet can get as many as 800,000 hits per month and our experience and success with the site has helped to develop e-commerce solutions for many other companies throughout the region."

That includes the original design for the international site of York-based expatshopping.com, one of the category winners in the Evening Press Business of the Year awards.

The arrival of wd39 - named after junction 39 on the M1 where it was based in Wakefield - is another feather in the cap of York Inward Investment Board (IIB) which has been responsible for luring a spate of firms to the city over the past four months.

Dave Taylor York IIB marketing director praised the company's energy and enthusiasm. "Its innovative future plans make the company a worthy addition to the York economy."