An engineering company hit hard by the recession is celebrating after winning a multimillion-pound contract.

Shoreham-based Ricardo has signed a deal with Russian company KATE LLC to work in partnership on the development of a new sevenspeed automatic transmission for AvtoVAZ, the maker of Lada cars.

Exact financial details of the deal are being kept under wraps but a Ricardo spokesman said it would be worth millions of pounds at least.

The company, which had to make 90 redundancies in March because of the downturn in the automotive industry, was given a further boost with news that its Taxibot vehicle had attracted the interest of major players in the airline industry.

Ricardo developed the Taxibot for Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) as a way of towing aircraft across airports without them having to use their main engines, drastically cutting the amount of fuel used and the carbon emissions produced.

Following the successful build and testing of a working demonstrator, IAI has now signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Airbus Industries and a Memorandum of Agreement with international ground support equipment provider TLD to cover the next stages of the vehicle’s deployment.

Again, the deal could be worth millions to Ricardo.

A spokesman for the company said: “We will continue to assist IAI with the project when the vehicle is moved to Airbus at Toulouse for further testing using large passenger jets early next year.

“The project is an excellent showcase of Ricardo’s vehicle engineering capabilities and we are sure it will lead to further work both in this and other sectors.”

According to an Interim Management Statement released last week, Ricardo stated “there is now a sense of stabilisation in a number of our core markets and we have noted an increasing level of sales interest in certain regions. China and Russia continue to be active, with recent order wins and medium to large-size programmes under discussion.”

Despite the increased workload, the spokesman would not comment on whether the company planned to hire more staff to replace those made redundant.

He added: “We are not in a position to discuss employment numbers at the present time, but it is nonetheless helpful to be seeing this stabilisation of the market.”