A high-tech metalsmith firm based in Kirkbymoorside has won a £420,000 order from the US.

Rapidly-expanding Micro-Metalsmiths Ltd, which manufactures metal components for industrial use at its Ings Lane works, has won the order from an American defence systems company - its name is a guarded secret - to supply it with its newly-developed microwave filters.

The US company has ordered components from the firm for military use in the past but this is the first commercial order from that source and it comes on the back of a number of other contracts from the telecoms industry.

The US order will keep not only the workforce busy at its Kirkbymoorside foundry, but also its microwave and assembly division at Thornton Road industrial estate in Pickering.

Steve Parking, general manager, said: "We are likely to be recruiting more people later although we have not yet ascertained the numbers needed."

After 35 years since it was established, Micro-Metalsmiths, has a turnover of up to £10million and employs 160 staff at its Kirkbymoorside and Pickering facilities,. It secured a DTI-sponsored Smart award in 1997 to develop the filter after getting help and guidance from Business Link North Yorkshire's innovation and technology adviser Roger Benson.

The Smart grants are available for two distinct types of project - a technical and commercial feasibility study into innovative technology and the development up to a pre-production prototype stage of a new product or process.

Micro Metalsmiths Managing Director Christopher Shaw said: "We are very grateful to Business Link for their help. We probably wouldn't have been able to get the Smart award without them and therefore would probably not have secured this order.

"We are a rapidly expanding business and are presently busy implementing a three-year plan that we hope will mean doubling the size of the company."

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