US technology company Northbrook Technology is expanding its Northern operations by creating more than 660 jobs in Belfast and in the former blackspots of Derry and Strabane, Co Tyrone.
About 400 of the jobs will be centred in Northbrook's existing operation in Belfast while new facilities in Derry and Strabane, which were badly hit by closures in the textiles industry, will create 260 jobs.
The North's industrial development body, Invest Northern Ireland is contributing £5.5 million (€7.9 million) towards the expansion. All 660 jobs are due to be in place by 2006, which would bring Northbrook's total employment in Northern Ireland to 1,400.
When all the jobs are established they will be worth £15.4 million in salaries annually to Belfast, Derry and Strabane.
The North's Enterprise Minister, Mr Barry Gardiner, made the announcement in Strabane yesterday.
"This is an area that has suffered tremendously hard. It lost the textile jobs that traditionally were the bedrock of employment in the area," he said.
"What we are now seeing are the new skills, the new service industry jobs, the new software jobs, that are taking up that employment space. That is real progress, not just for the north-west but for the whole of Northern Ireland," added Mr Gardiner.
He described the development as an "exceptionally important development within Invest Northern Ireland's North West Action Plan, which aims to transform the economy by attracting investment from IT and other knowledge-led sectors". Mr Gardiner added that more than £100 million was invested in the general Derry-Strabane area under the plan.
Northbrook is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the giant US insurance company Allstate Corporation which employs 40,000 people and which is listed on the New York Stock Exchange.
The corporation had a turnover of $32 billion (€25.4 billion) last year.
Northbrook's managing director, Mr Bro McFerran, said that part of the reason to move some operations out of Belfast to Derry - where it had an operation on the Magee university campus but is moving to a new facility on Strand Road - and to Strabane was based on the availability of workers.
He was confident that some of the people who lost textile jobs could be trained to work in the technology industry.
"Our choice of these locations was influenced by the success that we've already experienced in recruiting well-educated and easily motivated people in Belfast and Londonderry keen to develop careers in the IT industry," he said.
