SOFIA (Bulgaria), November 11 (SeeNews) – The operator of Bulgarian Black Sea port Lesport has tendered a design contract for the extension of its terminal, a notice posted on the website of Bulgaria's Public Procurement Agency indicated.
The bidding deadline is November 29. The submitted offers will be unsealed on December 1, the notice said.
The winner of the tender will prepare a conceptual, technical and working plan for the development of the port. The tendered works should be performed by December 31, 2010.
Eligible bidders are companies that have completed at least nine contracts for the design of port terminals or for other marine works, where at least one of them was valued at more than 2.0 million euro ($3.0 million) and at least one had received funding from the European Union. The candidates are also required to certify a turnover of at least 10 million euro for each of fiscal 2006, 2007 and 2008.
The performance bond is set at 2.5% of the proposed implementation costs while the participation guarantee is 15,000 euro.
The project will be co-financed by the European Union's Transeuropean Transport Network Program and the port operator.
The Master Plan for the development of the Lesport terminal, prepared by the Netherlands based consultancy Royal Haskoning B.V., has been approved by the Bulgarian authorities and came into force in February 2008. The Plan envisages substantial expansion of the territory of the Lesport Terminal - currently totalling 124,000 square metres, by reclaiming around 7 hectares to serve a grain terminal and by reclaiming another 5 hectares for the storage facilities of a new liquid cargo terminal.
The port (www.lesport-bg.com), located 10 kilometres from the city of Varna, handles general and bulk cargo, liquid vegetable oil cargo, biodiesel and ro-ro cargo.
The facility is operated by Port Lesport AD, 99%-owned by local business conglomerate Chimimport, under a 30-year concession arrangement.
($ = 0.6654 euro)