A BIRMINGHAM-BASED building company is looking to set up a base in the North East after securing a number of housing contracts in the region.

Regeneration specialist St Modwen Properties is seeing significant growth in its business after a huge uptake in its portfolio of rental properties in both the housing and commercial sectors.

The collapse of the property sector saw the firm make a huge pre-tax loss of £119.4m in 2009, with many of the firm’s developments remaining empty.

However, it has now returned to a pre-tax profit of £37.5m with the help of increased occupancy at its developments as well as its decision to bring forward a number of brownfield redevelopment schemes.

These include a partnership with York-based building giant Persimmon Homes to build 260 homes and 16,000sq ft of office accommodation at the former Pyrex glass factory site in Sunderland. The former Pyrex and Corning glass factories, next to each other to the west of the city centre, have lain derelict as monuments to the demise of Sunderland’s once great glass industry.

US company Corning announced plans in October 2006 to shut its 160-year-old glass-blowing factory with the loss of 100 jobs and the following January French-owned Arc International shut its Pyrex cookware plant with the loss of another 240 jobs.

St Modwen is also about to begin work on a further 250 homes at the former Corus Rolling Mill Site at Whessoe Road, Darlington, which employed 54 staff and was closed in 2006.

The firm, which already has offices in London, Bristol, Leeds, Stoke, Warrington and St Albans, will cover reclamation work at the sites, while Persimmon will undertake the actual building work.

St Modwen said it now hopes to open an office in the North East as it continues to win contracts in the region, which it said would employ workers directly as well as continue to contract out work to the local labour force.

Stephen Prosser, North East and Yorkshire regional director for St Modwen, said: “The North East region is proving to be a significant area of growth for the business and should this continue, we will be looking to open an office in the region to better serve our clients.

“The schemes we are undertaking this year in the North East this year will already create more than 100 jobs within the local labour force, which is fantastic given the problems facing the construction industry at present.”

The firm also said it had a strong pipeline of work for the rest of 2011 and that profits from its property portfolio, including joint ventures, had increased from £7.6m to £21.9m last year.

Prosser said: “It’s pleasing to see the company return strongly to profit, especially as market conditions in 2010 remained challenging.

“Our strategy of building on our income stream while bringing forward our brownfield renewal programme across Yorkshire and the North East is paying dividends.

“While occupational demand in 2010 was not strong overall, we have seen a steady supply of deals, largely because we’ve structured our business in a way which allows us to be flexible in meeting our tenants’ needs.”