CHEPSTOW engineering firm Mabey Bridge has secured its first order for wind turbine towers to be built at its Newhouse facility.

The contract for five steel tubular towers and nine foundation rings was placed by one of the UK's biggest suppliers of wind energy, REpower.

The firm has recently opened a big recruiting drive and it was still going through the shortlist and interview processes, said UK director Alex Smale.

"We have had enormous response to local advertising and we are very pleased with this," he told the Review on Monday.

"We are very glad to have secured this order and hopefully there will be many more to follow. Right now we are eager to get on and make these things."

He said at present some 400 onshore wind turbines were ordered each year and there was a growing offshore market which the company also hoped to be involved with.

While the main company's bridge construction business would remain its major specialism, the wind-turbine business was a welcome expansion.

Work on the new turbine contract will start in December and the goods will be delivered to REpower in April next year. Five towers and rings will be stationed at the Seamer wind farm near Stockton on Tees while four rings will go to the Low Spinney wind farm near Lutterworth, Leicestershire. Each tower weighs 150 tonnes and is 80 metres tall.