BICC picks up pounds 38m Hong Kong contract

BICC, the cable maker, has secured the future of 400 jobs for the rest of the decade at its Wrexham plant after winning a pounds 38m contract from Hong Kong, writes Robert Cole.

The company will make electricity cables for the generator and supplier Hongkong Electric.

BICC will manufacture all the cable at its factory in North Wales. It employs 398 people making cables in Wrexham, but the total workforce at the site is 628.

It will start deliveries next March but has agreed a contract that will run through to the end of the century. Britain will return sovereignty over the territory to China on 30 June 1997.

A spokesman for BICC said yesterday: 'The contract will be run on a partnership basis with engineers from the two companies working closely together to develop the technology appropriate to the changing needs of electricity distribution in Hong Kong.'

The contract is further evidence of BICC's efforts to forge business links in the East Asia, one of the world's fastest growing economic regions.

In 1933, BICC won pounds 280m of sales in its Asia-Pacific division. It has also set up a new company, called BICC Asia-Pacific Cables, in Singapore to manage the group's growing involvement in the area.