WARSHIP builder VT has landed a £150m deal to build and manage three offshore patrol vessels for Trinidad and Tobago in the Caribbean.

The contract will sustain around 200 skilled jobs and create a further 100 new positions at its Hampshire shipbuilding facility.

It sees VT supply training and long-term maintenance support as well as designing and building the 90-metre long ships - the first of which is due to be handed over in 2009.

They will be used for a range of special operations and maritime law enforcement tasks.

The deal represents another overseas success for the Hedge End-based company, which recently sealed a £400m deal to supply Oman with three ocean patrol vessels. That was the UK's first naval ship export order for ten years.

VT chief executive Paul Lester commented: "The programme will give additional long-term visibility to the order book of our shipbuilding business and is a further notable export success for VT following our contract in Oman. We anticipate that production will start at Portsmouth in autumn 2007."

Although support services such as military training make an increasingly central contribution to the balance sheet, VT's Portsmouth-based shipbuilding activities are still key. Shipbuilding accounted for £165m of the group's £847m turnover in 2006, while support services accounted for £682m.

However, a widely anticipated deal with fellow Hampshire defence giant BAe is expected to be announced before the summer which would see the two merge their shipbuilding interests into a new firm. This would concentrate on overseas sales such as the deals with Oman and Trinidad to allow it to cope with lean periods, when orders from its main customer, the Ministry of Defence, dried up.