The short-term contract comes as the Scottish local authority appears to have abandoned the idea for now of a longer term contract – last year the council scrapped a proposed 25 year contract with Viridor after legal action from a rival bidder.
The two-year South Lanarkshire council contract, which includes an option for the Scottish local authority to extend it for a further 12 months, will cover treatment of an estimated 97,000 tonnes of municipal waste collected in the area each year. The authority estimates the three year value of the work to be 28.5 million including landfill tax.
Bidding is open for two lots, with the first for designating receipt, separation, recycling and disposal of about 65,000 tonnes of unsorted municipal waste in East Kilbride, Hamilton, Cambuslang and Rutherglen. The second lot involves the disposal of 32,000 tonnes collected in the Clydesdale Area.
The notice, which discloses a deadline date of August 27 2013, follows the cancellation of South Lanarkshire councils 25-year waste contract last year, for which waste management company Viridor was named preferred bidder in September 2011. Viridor had successfully bid for the contract with a price of 459 million over its lifespan (see letsrecycle.com story).
The Viridor contract, which was due to start on April 1 this year, would have seen the company transport non-recyclable waste from South Lanarkshire for incineration at its EfW facility in Runcorn, Cheshire which is currently under construction and expected to be completed this year.
Court action
However, Forth-based Levenseat Ltd raised an action at the Court of Session in Edinburgh to challenge the award of the contract, arguing that the requirement to process food waste had only been introduced later by the Scottish Government and not at the outset of the tendering process when they had submitted their bid.
As a result, firms that were already removed from the tendering process had not been given the opportunity to bid for the food waste processing.
Despite announcing it would contest the action, South Lanarkshire council decided not to fight the case and voided the two-year-old procurement exercise in September 2012.
Now both Viridor and Levenseat have indicated that they are considering the short-term tender. Levenseat said it could not comment on the tender ahead of the process while Viridor said it was very interested in rebidding but declined to comment further. Other companies are also expected to compete for the work.
South Lanarkshire currently sends its residual household waste for disposal in landfills via two private waste companies. South Lanarkshire council was contacted by letsrecycle.com, but declined to comment at this stage of the tender process.
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