MORE than 1,000 skilled workers from the North-East are wanted to work on the construction of a multi-billion dollar oil processing plant - in Alberta, Canada.

It means hundreds of workers could be saying Auf Wiedersehen Pet to their loved ones - following in the footsteps of TV's Oz, Dennis and Neville, who went off to work overseas.

Recruitment specialist Roevin Management Services, which has offices in Newcastle and Redcar, has struck a deal with Canadian engineering firm Flint Energy Services to provide at least a quarter of the 4,000 staff needed on the plant in northern Alberta.

Roevin's human resources director, Gordon James, said the company was looking at the Teesside area first to fill the £50,000-a-year positions.

And it was on Teesside where a series of the hit TV show was filmed, when the lads dismantled the famous Transporter Bridge and reconstructed it near the Grand Canyon, in Arizona, for a North American tribe.

"The engineering skill level in the North-East is extremely high," said Mr James. "We are targeting the industrial engineering river areas - in other words around the Tees, the Tyne and the Wear.

"We are concentrating on Teesside first because we think the skilled labour is available there. Much of it at present travels down to London to work on Terminal Five at Heathrow, but we hope this will appear a more attractive alternative."

The job packages for pipe-fitters, electricians, shuttering joiners and steel workers include free accommodation, food and travel, with employees working abroad for 12 weeks and returning home for two.

Roevin has been asked to provide a minimum of 1,000 workers, but Mr James said the figure was expected to rise substantially.

Fifty-three people from the Teesside area have already been contracted to work on the two-year project and fly out to Canada on October 23.

A further 100 are expected to depart on January 4.

For more information, call 0161-935 2050 or visit www.roevin.co.uk.