A NORTH-EAST software company is recruiting 15 additional staff after it won more than £500,000 of new business.

SGP Consulting opened its office in Newcastle six months ago to support existing facilities in Swindon and Bristol.

After seeing the strength of the region's IT and software sectors, founder and managing director Stephen Purvis decided to make the company's North-East base its headquarters and quickly doubled the size of the space it occupied.

And just weeks after being added to the Government's G Cloud framework, an online marketplace for IT suppliers to offer their services to the public sector for commodity based cloud services, SGP Consulting has picked up two major contracts.

The first is with HP at Cobalt Business Park in Newcastle. SGP will work with HP to assist with their demand for the highest quality software engineers and cloud computing expertise.

SGP has also won an £100,000 contract with International Nuclear Services (INS) for the development of a database app to estimate shipping costs. This will save INS (formerly BNFL) time and money year on year.

Mr Purvis said: "Since we opened our office in Newcastle we've experienced significant growth which prompted the decision to make it our main base and double the space we occupy. Now we're in a position to announce these latest two contract wins, which could be worth in excess of £500,000 to the company.

"We have already said our target was to increase turnover to around £1.25m by the end of the current financial year. However, judging by the way things are going, that could well be a conservative estimation."

SGP Consulting is also through to the final stages of approval for the Government’s Corporate Software programme, which allows all Government departments and agencies to procure direct from SGP.

Mr Purvis added: "I am passionate about the North-East, its future as a tech centre of excellence, and am particularly proud to have been able to create 15 sustainable highly skilled technical jobs in the region in under six months, with a similar number to follow in the next two quarters."