Contracts worth £2m secure jobs at Spiral

A CORNISH stairways company is defying the economic gloom by securing a clutch of new orders.

Spiral Construction, of Helston, the UK's largest spiral staircase manufacturer, has announced a clutch of new contracts worth £2 million, defying current difficulties in the construction industry.

The contracts give the company a solid order book until well into spring 2010.

The largest contract, for £1 million, is for a further phase of the £8 billion Allenby/Connaught project for Aspire Defence, the largest on-going construction project in the UK.

Spiral is to provide more than 100 fire escape staircases for Ministry of Defence bases on Salisbury Plain and around Aldershot.

The business has been working on this project since 2006 and, as a result of its performance to date, was able to negotiate the contract without competition.

The company has also secured works on other MoD projects throughout the UK for a further £750,000, plus work to supply three feature staircases for the £35 million city centre university campus in Newport, Gwent.

Spiral Construction managing director Eric Nicholls said " We are absolutely delighted to have won these contracts, which secure work well into 2010, and some up to 2012.

"As a result of good work on past contracts we are now firmly established as the main supplier of this type of staircases on all Ministry of Defence sites around the United Kingdom.

"The construction industry is the most difficult we have experienced in more than 20 years, so this work is a credit to our skilled staff and all the efforts we are making."

The company, which employs 50 people at its Helston base and throughout the country, has continued to invest in new machinery and technology, recently buying a new rolling machine and extending its yard and outside storage areas.

It recently appointed Danny Chambers as sales and marketing manager, a new position in the company.

The company is currently installing four feature stainless steel and walnut staircases for new houses in central London which are on the market at £12 million each, despite the recession, and has just completed a large helical staircase for one of Scotland's leading schools, near Perth.