A maker of cancer-fighting medical equipment has won a lucrative contract to supply a Dutch hospital with its sophisticated radiotherapy machines.

Varian Medical Systems in Gatwick Road, Crawley, has been chosen to provide the Bernard Verbeeten Institute (BVI) in Tilburg with five linear accelerators.

The deal will bring state-of-the-art radiotherapy treatments closer to hundreds of thousands of Dutch cancer patients.

The new machines, which include a Trilogy accelerator, the most advanced of its kind, will be installed at the institute's Tilburg headquarters and at two satellite centres in the nearby cities of Breda and Den Bosch.

Jack Venselaar, medical physicist at the oncology clinic, said: "Both these cities have large populations but they have never had any radiotherapy facility in the city-based hospitals and patients have had to travel more than 30km to Tilburg.

"We want to support our patients by bringing radiotherapy closer to them, especially as treatments are fractionated and require multiple visits.

"Our institute is growing and it is time to build satellites for these cities and reduce travel times and costs."

Work will begin in early 2008 to build new radiotherapy treatment rooms alongside the new hospital site in the city of Den Bosch and the existing hospital in Breda.

Both new radiotherapy departments will remain part of the Dr Bernard Verbeeten Institute and be independent of the adjacent hospitals.

It is expected that by the summer of 2009, all machines will be installed and operating clinically.

Varian, which employs 200 people in Crawley, is the world's leading supplier of radiotherapy equipment for the treatment of cancer.

The company, formerly known as TEM, became a subsidiary of US-based Varian in 1984 and its European manufacturing headquarters.

While dozens of hospitals and clinics in Britain use Varian's radiotherapy equipment, 98 per cent of the company's products are exported.