FIFTY jobs are being created by an engineering company after it won work worth more than £108m.

A consortium, Amec and Alstom, have won the work from npower to fit new environmental technology which will help reduce sulphur emissions at a coal-fired power station in South Wales.

The share of the work going to Amec is expected to be about £64m and the company last night confirmed it would be recruiting 50 people at its industrial division in Darlington.

The project is driven by European environmental regulations due to come into force in 2008, which require air pollution technology to reduce emissions.

The technology will help improve the environmental performance of the Aberthaw power station, near Barry, in Wales, help safeguard the station's future and provide a boost to the local economy.

Amec will be carrying out the project management of the engineering design, as well as civil and structural design.

Alstom will provide the pollution control equipment.

Work will start at the power station in the spring, with the project being completed by 2008.

Steve Lee, managing director of Amec's industrial division, said: "This is an important opportunity for Amec and forms part of our overall strategy of providing specialist services across the energy spectrum, from oil and gas through to nuclear and renewables.

"It is one of a number of potential similar environmental projects for Amec's industrial business across the UK, driven by the pressures from new European legislation to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 2008."

The technology removes 95 per cent of the sulphur dioxide produced when generating electricity from coal, helping to significantly cut emissions.

Only last week, Amec's Darlington division won £80m of work with the National Grid to work on gas storage facilities.

Amec employs about 400 people in industrial and support services at two sites in Darlington. The industrial division has enjoyed a buoyant year, winning hundreds of millions of pounds-worth of work.

Amec is an international project management company employing 44,000 people in more than 40 countries.

As well as its Darlington operations, it employs about 100 engineers at its site in Wallsend, North Tyneside, although its fabrication yard there has been mothballed and is unlikely to reopen.

In September, Amec announced a recruitment drive across the UK.