Three companies have put in bids to build desulphurisation installations at Maritsa Iztok 2 thermal power plant in Bulgaria, with a winner expected to be chosen by mid-August. The competitors are the Italian-Chinese consortium Idreco-Insigma, Poland's Rafako and the Italian subsidiary of French Alstom Power, Dnevnik daily reported on July 8.

The competition to build the desulphurisation installations for the fifth and the sixth units of the power plant has heated up as bidders await the approval of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), which will extend a 34 million euro loan to cover part of the project's costs.

Total cost has been estimated at 80.3 million euro, the rest of the money secured under the European Union's Ispa pre-accession aid programme.

The choice is made more difficult by the ongoing lawsuit in Singapore between Alstom Power and China's Insigma. The French company says the licence awarded to Insigma in 2004 to use Alstom's technology was valid only in Asia.

Maritza Iztok 2 managers, however, have said that disputes between bidders would not influence the final choice, Dnevnik reported. The main assessment criteria were the price offered, future maintenance costs and prior experience.

According to industry sources, quoted by Dnevnik, Idreco-Insigma had offered the lowest price and a construction period of one year. But, according to the other bidders, the consortium's price offer was one applied to new power plants, rather than ones that have been in use for a long time, including Maritza Iztok 2, Dnevnik said.