AN offshore energy sector engineer has cut jobs in a restructure, The Northern Echo can reveal.

Mech-Tool Engineering has confirmed “a number of people” have left the business as it adjusts to a changing market.

The shock move comes just days after officials claimed a deal to supply equipment, including fire and blast safety walls to Canada’s Hebron oil platform, was “one of many multi-million, high-profile contracts being delivered”.

But a spokeswoman for the firm, which runs its head office from a site on Darlington’s Whessoe Road and is also known as MTE, said it has had to adapt to a shifting environment.

She added the move has not forced any closures at the firm’s office and manufacturing bases in Darlington and Middlesbrough.

She said: “We can confirm a number of people have left the Mech-Tool business.

“This has been part of a restructuring programme to ensure the business remains agile and capable in a continually changing market.”

The firm says its UK workforce stands at 259 people.

Earlier this year, the Echo reported how Mech-Tool, which previously opened a base in South Korea in a bid to attract new work from Asian shipyards, had supported work on a £1.5bn energy development.

The business delivered a contract to help Statoil’s Dudgeon wind farm come to fruition, with bosses at the time revealing the company made and supplied fire and blast walls for the Norfolk coast development, which Statoil claims will power more than 400,000 homes.

The firm also last year secured what it said was the most valuable deal in its history - a £37m contract to design and make units for a Kazakhstan oil field development – and is known for supporting Hartlepool’s Heerema on a substation platform for the Galloper Wind Farm, off the Suffolk coast.