INDUSTRY experts are predicting a jobs bonanza will hit Tyneside with the knock-on effects of the MoD contract won by shipbuilder Swan Hunter.

The £150m deal for two landing vessels at Swans' Wallsend yard will create around 2,000 jobs but politicians and regeneration chiefs hailed the victory as the most significant for the region for years.

The estimate is for every job at Swans another four will be created in supplier industries and in the local community, to help herald the re-birth of the Tyne as a thriving industrial river.

One NorthEast's director of strategy, Jonathan Blackie put the figure as high as 10,000 jobs created saying: "Yesterday was the day the river started living again.

"This deal has the potential to create more than 10,000 jobs."

Shipbuilding will return to Tyneside in the next few months after a delay of almost seven years.

Work on the ships is expected to start early next year. The first will be completed by 2003, 10 years after the last ship to be completed at the yard, HMS Richmond, headed down the Tyne.

But Swans has its sights set on bigger orders in the future with two aircraft carriers worth £1billion each at the MoD design stage, and a further 25 Royal Navy ships earmarked over the next 20 years.

The present contract maybe used by the MoD to measure up the Tyneside yard for what promises to be a bonanza for shipbuilders over the coming years.

Bill Midgley of the North East Regional Assembly, said: "These are real jobs, not just call centre work. It is skilled employment using the talents of thousands of men who thought their day may have passed. It is the kind of work which made the North East great, it is recapturing a way of life which has given so much to this region and will again.