The first businesses to take advantage of the newly created Tees Valley Enterprise Zone have been unveiled.

Omega Plastics and Propipe Limited will both be moving into units at Hartlepool’s Queens Meadow Business Park – one of 12 Enterprise Zone sites across the Tees Valley.

Both companies will benefit from Business Rates relief over the next 5 years and during that period a total of 45 new jobs are expected to be created.

To mark their arrival, a signing ceremony was held at Queens Meadow on Wednesday 2 May 2012 attended by Hartlepool Mayor Stuart Drummond, Tees Valley Unlimited’s Managing Director Stephen Catchpole and representatives from other key partner organisations.

Omega Plastics – a plastic injection moulding company – was formed 6 years ago and is currently based at Riverside Business Park in Blyth, Northumberland.

The company, which lists Unilever, Aston Martin and McLaren Mercedes among its customers, will retain its existing premises and aims to increase its workforce from 29 to 50 as part of the expansion into Queens Meadow Business Park.

Propipe Limited is currently located on Hartlepool’s Park View Industrial Estate and the move to a 16,000 square feet unit at Queens Meadow will enable the company to expand and more than double its current workforce.

Formed in 1998, Propipe manufactures specialist pipeline equipment for the oil and gas industry and has current contracts in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Far East and the Americas. Propipe aims to create at least 24 new jobs on top of the 20 people they already employ and is recruiting now for project engineers, design engineers, workshop operators and sales personnel.

Hartlepool Mayor Stuart Drummond said:

This is tremendous news. I’m delighted that Omega Plastics and Propipe Limited have signed up to the Enterprise Zone and hopefully they will be the first of many companies to benefit from the incentives on offer.