Disappointing results at the North's biggest private sector employer, Shorts, have been blamed on the collapse last year of one of its biggest customers, the Dutch planemaker Fokker. That led to the disappearance of more than 15 per cent of the aerospace company's total business, and the loss of 900 jobs.

Overall, Shorts turnover last year was £358 million sterling, down from £391 million the previous year. Pre-tax profits fell from £33.8 million to just over £30 million.

The chairman, Mr Roy McNulty, said the position could have been even worse if it had not been for growth in other areas, particularly in Shorts' participation in the aerospace programmes of its parent company, the Montreal-based Bombardier Inc. The Canadian company acquired Shorts when the Belfast company was privatised in 1989, and since then has invested more than £700 million.

Bombardier's sales in the aerospace industry have risen from nothing a decade ago to four billion Canadian dollars, making it the third largest aerospace company in the world. Shorts role in the construction of Bombardier's new longhaul jet, Global Express, is expected to lead to the creation of around 1,000 new jobs at the Belfast factory over the next five years.

Bombardier has plants in Canada and the United States, and in several European countries, employing more than 40,000 people. Turnover for the year to the end of January 1997 was Can$8 billion.

There has also been an increase in orders from Shorts biggest customer, Boeing, which has taken around 30 aircraft engineers from the Belfast plant.

As a result of the increased business from both Bombardier and Boeing, some 350 people have been recruited since the start of the year, bringing total employment in Northern Ireland to 6,200, which is around 500 less than the size of the workforce before the demise of Fokker.

"Over the past three years," Mr McNulty said, "we have started ten new aerostructures or nacelle programmes which will account for almost 60 per cent of our aerospace business at Belfast by the year 2000. The number of articles Shorts will deliver in 1997 is double that of two years ago."

In the long term, he said, the loss of the Fokker contracts will be more than replaced by Shorts participation in two new Bombardier programmes announced at the beginning of this year - the Canadair Regional Jet Series 700, and the de Havilland Dash 8-400.

Earlier this month, there was more good news when the British government took a step closer to ordering a new military transport plane in a deal which could lead to significant additional work for the company.

The order is for a replacement for the ageing Hercules transport aircraft, termed the Future Large Aircraft, or FLA. The FLA is being designed by the Airbus consortium, in which one of the partners is British Aerospace, for which Shorts is a sub-contractor.

If the final approval is given for the project to go ahead, it would put the Belfast company in line for projects worth many millions of pounds.

Shorts has also benefited from growth in its missile division, which contributed more than £2 million in profits.