A NORTH-EAST construction firm has made its first major breakthrough into the retail sector as it secured work to help build a £650m shopping centre.

Newton Aycliffe’s Finley Structures has won a multi-million pound deal to supply a part of the Victoria Gate development in Leeds city centre.

The family firm, which has recently completed steelwork on Hitachi Rail Europe's train factory for Shepherd Construction, was awarded a 20-week contract from Sir Robert McAlpine's Manchester office, to make and erect 2,300 tonnes of steel, after being recommended for the job by the firm's Newcastle office following the successful completion of Nissan's new car plant in Washington.

The work is being done on behalf of leading retail developer Hammerson Property.

Finley Structures operations manager Jim Graham said: "This is a very prestigious contract for us and we're delighted to be doing this work for Sir Robert McAlpine on behalf of Hammerson.

"Retail is fairly new to us, but is an area we've been looking to explore for some time now, and to get on to Hammerson's supply chain is a major coup for the company.

"It's a very high maintenance job. In retail there tends to be a lot of alterations and you have to react very quickly to change, which we've been doing very well to date and we're currently on programme.

"It's another indication of how far Finley Structures has come in the last three-to-four years, with large-scale projects like this now becoming run-of-the-mill stuff to us."

The Victoria Gate contract comes after Finley Structures, founded by John Finley in 2000, was given a 2,000-tonne contract to fabricate and erect the steel frame for Hitachi's factory on Aycliffe Business Park last year.

During a busy 2014, the family firm, which employs 60 full-time staff, also completed a 1,400-tonne project for Nissan, as well as a 300-tonne contract for the National Biologics Centre in Darlington for contractors Interserve.

Finley expect to complete the structural steelwork on the Leeds project in June.

Victoria Gate, formerly known as Eastgate Quarters and the Harewood and Eastgate Quarters, is a £650m development which is planned to open in late 2016.