WE exclusively revealed third generation distribution firm AV Dawson was working on £6m plans to bolster North-East steelmaking.

In March, we reported how the Middlesbrough company was building a 300-metre storage area.

Handling up to 30,000 tonnes of steel coil from Tata Steel's south Wales operations, bosses said it would hold products for car makers, such as Sunderland's Nissan.

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WE revealed 111-year-old family engineering firm Francis Brown Limited was targeting new markets after securing major energy contracts.

The fourth generation Stockton-based company provided services for projects in Australia and Norway, carrying out specialist submerged arc welding for subsea connectors.

Some of the equipment was sent aboard a specialist vessel in Western Australia.

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AFTER microelectronics firm Compound Photonics bought RF Micro Devices’ (RFMD) plant, in Newton Aycliffe, County Durham, The Northern Echo was there to announce its next move – push to create up to 100 highly-skilled jobs.

The semiconductor maker, whose products are used in radar equipment for military planes, said in July it wanted to add to its 107-strong workforce, as it made Aycliffe its global headquarters.

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IN early September, we reported how family-run offshore valve maker BEL Valves was aiming to create up to 100 North-East in a £15m expansion.

Bosses at the firm, which makes valves for pipeline shutdowns and high pressure equipment, said they had 30 positions to fill immediately, with a further 100 posts targeted over the next three years, after moving to a new factory.

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OFFSHORE protection specialist MTE Ltd, in Darlington, expanded into Asia to unlock lucrative new markets.

The company, known as Mech-Tool Engineering, opened a factory in Busan, South Korea, telling us it was looking to attract new work from Korean shipyards for its fire and blast protection for oil and gas platforms.

In October, we revealed it had won £11m work to supply fire and blast walls to South Korean firms Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering and Samsung Heavy Industries.

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OUR business pages reported how a potash firm’s senior figure was leaving his role, just weeks after revealing £38m plans to create hundreds of jobs in a polyhalite fertiliser development.

We revealed Phil Baines, managing director at Cleveland Potash, in Boulby, east Cleveland, was moving to work in Ethiopia, to oversee a $1bn low-cost potash development.

We also revealed the company was looking at plans to move some back office jobs to Amsterdam.

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The AMA Group brought clothes-making back to its North-East roots after opening a factory, in Peterlee, east Durham, with the aim of employing well in excess of 100 workers.

The Northern Echo revealed bosses were holding talks with famous fashion brand Fred Perry over a potential supply deal.

We also reported it had an agreement to send girls’ leggings to Sports Direct and held negotiations with Tesco over nightwear and casual gym-style lines after supplying thousands of ladies tops for the supermarket’s F&F range.

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AFTER an initial Government rejection, plans for a groundbreaking North-East engineering centre of excellence were approved.

The Northern Echo reported how a £10m university technical college would train youngsters at Newton Aycliffe months after exclusively revealing the original bid.

The college will open in 2016, teaching up to 600 students a year.

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THE Northern Echo revealed how aircraft recycling firm Sycamore Aviation had been forced to cut a number of jobs after airlines stopped scrappages.

Days later, we confirmed Sycamore had been locked out of its hangar at Durham Tees Valley Airport.

However, last month Sycamore was bought by Glyn Wall Limited, which claimed it wanted to create jobs.

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WE revealed family-run manufacturing firm Ebac had officially started its long-awaited venture into the freezer industry.

The Newton Aycliffe company is making Norfrost chest freezers in a move the company says could create about 100 jobs, as it aims to roll at least 50,000 appliances off its production line every year.

The company is also just weeks away from becoming the UK’s only washing machine maker.

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A major office development providing work for North-East businesses would bring hundreds of jobs to a town, The Northern Echo reported.

Council bosses said the Department for Education (DfE) building, in Darlington, would be the catalyst for significant job growth.

The four-storey office block, next to Darlington Town Hall, will house about 400 civil servants.

However, Councillor Bill Dixon, Darlington Borough Council leader, said: “This is not just about the 400 jobs, it’s about the ones created in the next 20 and 30 years.”

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JDR Cables, in Hartlepool, told The Northern Echo it aimed to create more North-East jobs by capitalising on contract wins.

Earlier this year, the company claimed a second successive win in the Coalition’s Regional Growth Fund (RGF) job creation scheme.

Martin Boden, JDR’s chief financial and compliance officer, said: “Hartlepool is an absolutely key location for us.

“There will be growth at Hartlepool and we are very excited about the contracts we have won.”

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A TECHNOLOGY firm behind a wonder science material said it was tripling its North-East workforce to become an industry world leader.

Applied Graphene Materials, near Redcar, said it wanted 30 staff by the end of the year, including a business development team covering mainland Europe.

Graphene can conduct electricity a million times better than copper, despite being as thin as human hair.

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WHEN Mark Carney, the Bank of England Governor, made his first visit to the region The Northern Echo was the only media he spoke to.

After sharing his expertise with a group of Darlington pupils in the morning, we caught up with the man who holds sway over interest rates.

During the interview he revealed for the first time that interest rates may rise before next year’s general election. His comments were followed up by most of the national newspapers and news agencies the following day.

We asked the governor whether he was ruling out a rate rise before the election, as most economic commentators had previously assumed.

He replied: “Absolutely not. We will set policy as appropriate to meet our core responsibility to meet the 2 per cent inflation target. We haven’t set timing conditions on when that will be. But we are absolutely clear that it will happen independent of the political cycle.”

However he also hinted that more jobs would need to be created in regions like the North-East before rates could rise.

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LAST year’s deal by Samsung, the technology multinational, rescued one of our region’s oldest engineers.

The buyout preserved Whessoe engineering in Darlington, but the acid test was to see if the Korean firm could use its international clout to rebuild a name that was once world famous.

When Samsung bought Whessoe last year, it took over a firm where staff numbers had fallen from hundreds to only 57, and morale was at rock bottom.

There were fears for the future of the company, which had once employed thousands of workers in the North-East.

In February, it won accreditation to enable it to build the biggest gas tank of its kind in the world - opening up new global markets and creating jobs in the North-East.

Andy Beedle, who heads Whessoe's business development division, said: "Having the credibility of Samsung has been a game-changer for us here. It gives us opportunities where we otherwise just wouldn't have got through the door.

"Instead of being a small company in Darlington we are part of the biggest company in Korea."

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DISCOVERING a new and much more effective treatment for diabetic blindness would win Polyphotonix a huge contract with the NHS. If, as looks increasingly likely, it proves to have found a cure for the condition as well, then the Sedgefield firm will become known worldwide.

Established by former artist Richard Kirk, the company has developed a revolutionary system that uses a mask, rather than the current method which involves injections or lasers, to treat an illness which is the leading cause of blindness for adults.

Ministers are understandably excited by the innovation which could lead to it saving the Health Service £1bn a year.

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IT sounds like the plot of a heist movie but we have been trying to find a way inside the De La Rue banknote factory for ages.

The 600 jobs site this year marked its half century. It is the largest commercial banknote factory in the world.

Being given a tour around the top secret plant offered a rare insight into a manufacturer producing about ten million banknotes a day - up to 3.1 billion a year.

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NETPARK marked its 10th anniversary by telling us about its radical expansion plans to triple in size.

The science and technology hub had a slow start after it was opened by then Prime Minister Tony Blair. But the last two years has seen it pick up momentum, giving CPI, Durham County Council and Durham University the confidence to draw up plans to make the site the global centre for materials integration – investigating and taking to market a host of new life-enhancing products.

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STEEL firm SSI decided to announce its results on a Saturday evening. It made for more grim regarding although it's been pleasing to see the Redcar business show signs that it is moving into the black.

The first report of the results was on The Northern Echo website shortly before midnight before any of the national Sunday papers had hit the newstands.

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ALMOST 100 jobs were saved and a dozen created following a management buy-out at car parts manufacturer DPE Automotive Limited. Boss Peter Coates predicted "great things" for the Newton Aycliffe company which supplies clients such as Nissan, Gestamp, Magna, RTEK, DS Smith and Johnson Controls.

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THIS time last year the Merchant Park site beside Aycliffe Business Park was a green field. It now hosts a factory that will build trains for the East Coast Mainline.

Ever since The Northern Echo campaigned to bring train building back to the region we have led the coverage of this historic project. We will continue to report every major milestone in the run up to production starting at Hitachi Rail Europe in January 2016.