North East firm lands £1.1m Ministry of Defence programme contract

A North East developer of advanced security and surveillance systems has been awarded a £1.1m contract to provide equipment for a UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) programme.

Petards, the defence arm of which is based in Gateshead, has secured a contract with a major UK defence systems firm to provide electronic countermeasures equipment for use on a MoD programme.

The majority of the equipment, which will form part of an integrated defensive aids suite on military aircraft, is expected to be delivered in the second half of 2020.

Specialising in three core areas of traffic, rail and defence, Guildford-headquartered Petards has completed projects for the likes of Network Rail, Siemens and BAE Systems.

Petards chairman, Raschid Abdullah, commented: “We are delighted to have been reselected for the next phase of this electronic countermeasures project which will serve to protect aircraft and the lives of the service personnel that fly in them.

“The company has been supplying and servicing such systems for many years and we believe that this is indicative of the value that our customer places on our expertise in this specialist field.”