Carr's Group has won a framework contract at Sellafield, potentially worth £48m over 10 years.

The deal should safeguard 110 jobs at Bendalls, its engineering subsidiary at Kingstown Industrial Estate, Carlisle, and provide work for the design offices in Cleator Moor and Warrington and its Chirton Engineering business in the North East.

Carlisle-based Carr's announced in a trading update that it had been awarded the Sellafield Vessels and Tanks Category Management Framework contract, won through an open European tendering process.

Ivan Baldwin, business development director at Carr's Engineering, said: “It will involve the design and manufacture of the most complex pressure vessels and tanks on the Sellafield site.

“It will be technically challenging as the entirety of the build is what is called quality grade one, the highest-quality standard for nuclear.

“Often these tanks hold radioactive waste and they are in contaminated facilities where, once they're in, they can't be taken out.”

The timing of the contract could not be better for Carr's, which has seen orders from the oil and gas sector decline because of the weak oil price.

Overall, the Carlisle-based agriculture, food and engineering group says that trading is “in line with expectations” for the financial year ending September 3.

Carr's has more than 50 UK sites, a robotics business in Germany and animal-feed plants in the US.

The Cumbrian operations include Silloth flour mill, the Carrs Billington agricultural machinery dealerships and country retail stores, and Bendalls Engineering.

It says that agricultural feedblock sales have performed very well, especially in the US, although farm maxchinery sales are down.

Last month Carrs Billington acquired Phoenix Feeds. The Lancashire business provides dairy feed and technical nutrition advice to farmers.

Carr's food division performed well, with underlying volumes 1.6 per cent of last year, and while engineering is “behind expectations” for the current year, long-term prospects have been “notably strengthened” by the Sellafield contract, it added.