A SOUTHAMPTON firm has announced plans to expand its workforce after winning a multimillion-pound contract to build kitchens for the Royal Navy’s new aircraft carriers.

Kempsafe, which is based in Quayside Road, Bitterne Manor, will be paid £3.4m to manufacture galley equipment for HM Queen Elizabeth and Prince of Wales.

The 65,000-ton carriers, which will be part built in Hampshire, will carry a crew of about 1,500 and up to 40 aircraft.

They will enter service in 2014 and 2016 and will be the biggest and most powerful surface warships ever made in the UK.

Navy kitchens, known as galleys, have to be made very differently to domestic kitchens, with specially made electrical systems, reinforced glass, treatments to repel salt air and other safety features.

Kempsafe, which employs 22 people and has 40 years’ experience of manufacturing catering and laundry equipment for the marine industry, is now looking to recruit more staff to cover the new orders, which come on top of existing commissions to build kitchens for the Royal Navy’s Astute Class submarines and Type 45 Destroyer warships.

Derek Sales, managing director of Kempsafe, said: “This is great news for a long-established company.

We will be taking on more people to fill the labour requirement for what will be a busy time for the company and look forward to contributing to the future of the Navy. It also means job security for us over the next four-and-a-half years.”

The new contract was one of several worth a total of £90m announced by the MoD for steel work, modular cabins and other components for the new aircraft carriers.

It forms part of the £3bn manufacturing contract awarded by the MoD to the Aircraft Carrier Alliance, a consortium which includes BVT Surface Fleet, BAE Systems Marine, Babcock and Thales UK.

Geoff Searle, programme director of the Aircraft Carrier Alliance, said yesterday the “iconic project”

would involve companies in many parts of the UK, creating and sustaining “thousands of jobs”.

The construction and assembly of the carriers in Portsmouth, Barrow-in- Furness, Govan and Rosyth will create or sustain 10,000 jobs across the country.