IRISH COMPANY DPS Engineering has won a €2 million contract from pharmaceutical giant Glaxo Smith Kline for the design, construction, management and commissioning of a high-tech human vaccine facility in Wavre, Belgium.

DPS chief executive Frank Keogh said yesterday that the company will have up to 35 engineers and scientists involved at peak activity.

The contract is with GSK Biologicals, which is part of Glaxo Smith Kline.

“DPS has had a long and very successful relationship with GSK and this is the latest in a series of contracts we have secured,” Mr Keogh said.

“We have provided engineers to support GSK’s activities in Hungary, the United States, India, Singapore and France.”

DPS has also recently won a significant contract in the Benelux region from Merck.

The company has design offices in Dublin and Cork but in 1998 it opened a new office at Leiden in the Netherlands to bid for pharmaceutical sector business in mainland Europe.

“That was an important move for DPS. Since then we have carried out many contracts in Europe and have provided specialist engineers and scientists for a range of pharmaceutical customers including Centocor, Solvay, and Schering Plough,” Mr Keogh said.

DPS is one of Ireland’s leading engineering companies.

The company has annual turnover of €35 million and currently employs more than 400 people.

Mr Keogh said DPS plans to boost its turnover to more than €50 million over the next five years, capitalising on growth in the biopharmaceutical sector.

“We want to expand more into mainland Europe.

“Currently we do about 25 per cent of our work outside Ireland, but we are hoping to increase that to 50 per cent by 2014,” Mr Keogh added.

DPS was set up in 1974 but was the subject of a management buyout and restructuring in 1996.

It opened in Leiden in 1998 and followed that in 2007 with the establishment of an office in Singapore.

It also has a presence in Saudi Arabia.