A manufacturing company based at Castleham Industrial Estate Hastings has won a contract that could bring new jobs into the town, just a year after being forced to make redundancies.

VacGen have bagged a £1m contract to supply vacuum vessels for a new project based in Oxfordshire.

This two year contract, and others in the pipeline, could lead to a wealth of job opportunities in the town.

A spokesman for the company said: " We're bidding on several other projects at the moment. We could expand a great deal if it all goes right. We employ about 100 people already, and we could have to dramatically increase our workforce in the next few years."

The company, which supplies high quality vacuum components to a wide range of industries, such as the communication industry, have survived an industry-wide slump last year which led to 23 redundancies.

The spokesman said: "We had to restructure and that was hard. Industry world wide was terrible after September 11. Fortunately we were a big enough company to absorb the losses, and now we've really turned the corner."

VacGen is contracted to supply vessels for the development of the Synchrotron, a device which generates intense light beams enabling scientists to study atoms and molecules. Similar projects are progressing in Australia, Germany and France.

The spokesman said: "This is a seriously important project. It's one of the biggest scientific developments in the UK for years and a very positive thing for us.

" There's a lot of people who've worked a lot of hours to turn it around, and now the sun has definitely come out."