October 2 (SeeNews) - A consortium led by Croatian construction company GP Krk is asking the lowest price to build an extension of the Brajdica container terminal in the country's Adriatic port of Rijeka, local media reported.
The 26 million euro ($38 million) bid filed by GP Krk and its partners, Slovenia's Primorje and Croatian builder Viadukt, is substantially lower than earlier estimates which put the cost of the project at around 40 million euro, news daily Novi List (www.novilist.hr) reported on Thursday.
In April this year, the World Bank and the Rijeka Port Authority signed a 84 million euro loan agreement for the Rijeka Gateway II Project which will further develop the capacity of the port through the extension of the existing Brajdica container terminal by about 330 meters and the construction of infrastructure for a 400 meter long Zagreb Pier container terminal.
No information was immediately available on when the tender was launched and when its bidding deadline expired.
According to unofficial sources, the GP Krk-led tie-in has the edge over the next best offer, filed by a consortium led by Croatian builder Konstruktor, by about 600,000 euro, Novi List said.
The port authority unsealed a total of six financial offers a couple of days ago, it added without elaborating on the name of the other bidders.
Under the terms of the tender, the new pier should be ready in three years, tripling the annual throughput capacity of the Brajdica container terminal to 400,000 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs), Novi List said.
The Rijeka port recorded a 16% increase in annual container throughput to around 169,000 TEUs in 2008, according to data of the port authority.
($= 6877 euro)