A HI-TECH company manufacturing plastic medical devices and injection-moulded medical components is bucking the trend of British manufacturing and investing in plant development.

Europlaz Technologies, based in Southminster, is spending £500,000 to expand cleanroom facilities and purchase new machinery, which will generate more jobs.

The company, which currently employs 40, is also in the early stages of creating apprenticeships in machine setting, machine maintenance, quality control and 3D computer aided design (CAD).

The first of the new jobs to be advertised include an injection-mould setter and quality engineer, with around 10 more vacancies at all levels expected between now and Christmas.

Technical director Steve Sansom said: "We expect to soon expand into running a night shift and we are certainly looking for new staff for both day and night work."

The company, based in Essex for 40 years, has won a number of contracts this year from blue-chip companies on both sides of the Atlantic.

These contracts, to manufacture new technical and innovative medical products, will allow the company to further develop when others are downsizing.

Mr Sansom added: "Europlaz is seeing an upturn in business that can directly help boost the local economy.

"I think the reason we are doing so well comparatively is that we specialise in a niche market, competing with only a few other UK companies.

"We offer a complete service from concept design to end product, and, with the medical sector largely recessionproof, we've been approached by a large number of pharmaceutical companies."

The Europlaz site at The Maltings Industrial Estate in Southminster has been manufacturing plastic components since 1970. In the mid-1990s it developed to become a specialist contract medical-device manufacturer, making a wide range of disposable plastic medical goods, such as inhalers, for such companies as Glaxo SmithKline.

For the past 10 years, it has also specialised in assembling sterile medical products in clean rooms, such as disposable kits for use in operating theatres.

Europlaz had a reported turnover for 2009 of £3 million.