FONE Logistics, which last week saved 54 jobs by buying out the field engineering and repairs division of Convergent Communication, the doomed telecoms group, in Pocklington, will trade in the town under the new name Active Technology.

Ian Gillespie, 44-year-old managing director and founder of the £40 million turnover Fone Logistics, at Cramlington, near Newcastle, revealed today that he was still negotiating a lease on a factory unit on the Pocklington Industrial Estate opposite the old Convergent HQ.

From there, he hoped that an independently-operated Active Technology would profit under managing director Mark Blakeston, Convergent's former technical director.

To that end, said Mr Gillespie, he had begun to contact Convergent's engineering and repairs customers to persuade them of continuity of excellence. "The really hard work starts here," he said.

Once Active Technology is up and running, he hopes that its new Pocklington base will also be used as a mobile phone retail outlet. "We want to tap into the huge local support enjoyed by Convergent in the days when it was called JWE," he said.

But Mr Gillespie rejects any suggestion that he is a "saviour" of jobs at Pocklington's biggest employer even though as part of the deal with administrators he is paying the June salaries of all the staff he took on - which is more than the 100 Convergent workers who lost their jobs could now look forward to.

"I'm no saviour," he said. "Really I have kept on about 15 Pocklington people and the remaining 39 are all repairs people in the field, based in a number from places from Aberdeen to London."

Mr Gillespie formed Fone Logistics in 1996 after he began supplying phones as a wholesale distributor. Since then, the company had established key partnerships with 3, Vodafone, O2 and T-Mobile. It also runs its own mobile phone and repair service from Cramlington.

Updated: 10:17 Friday, July 04, 2003