ENGINEERING company The Tanfield Group could be set to secure another major contract after agreeing a trial period to supply its vehicles to Royal Mail.

The deal will see Tanfield's Smith Electric Vehicles' division supplying one of each of its zero-emission Edison and Newton models to Royal Mail - which has a fleet of 33,000 commercial delivery vehicles - for a trial period.

The announcement came as Tanfield also revealed it has had to double capacity at its base in Washington, Wearside, from five to ten vehicles a day, to keep up with demand, and has created more than 250 jobs since October.

The Royal Mail trial follows other recent major deals with TNT Express, which is trialling 50 electric trucks for the UK and five for mainland Europe, and Sainsbury's Online, which has initially taken eight electric vans for use in London and has pledged to electrify the whole of its urban home shopping delivery fleet by 2010.

Yesterday, Tanfield said it was hopeful of securing a much bigger deal with Royal Mail for the vehicles, which have a top speed of 50mph but cover 150 miles on one battery charge.

A spokesman said: "Royal Mail is an ideal customer for us, as they do a lot of depot to depot operations covering relatively short distances.

"Therefore, we would anticipate they would be looking to replace a large proportion of the fleet, should the trial be successful."

Other companies trialling Smith vehicles include DHL, Starbucks, Marks and Spencer and Scottish and Southern Energy.