The consortium of Bollore Africa Logistics and PowerChina International Group Ltd. has been selected as the preferred bidder for the Ibom Deep Seaport Project (IDSP) on the southern coast of Nigeria. Now the project passes to the next stage of public private partnership procurement process, which is negotiating with the preferred bidder on the investment and concession details.
As we wrote earlier, IDSP is a Public Private Partnership (PPP) port infrastructure project sponsored by the Nigeria Federal Ministry of Transportation, Nigerian Port Authority, and the Akwa Ibom State Government, with the international advising from PricewaterhouseCoopers and Singapore-based port engineering consultancy company Global Maritime and Port Services Pte Ltd.
Strategically located in the South East of Akwa Ibom State, a leading oil and gas producing state of Nigeria, the project includes 2,565 hectares of greenfield port area, integrated within the Ibom Industrial City, a free trade zone with fiscal incentives.
The new port is designed to provide channel depth of 18.24m, turning basin and berth depth of 16.72m and quay length of about 7.5 km upon completion. It will have a capacity of 9 mln TEU and will cater for large container vessels of 13,000 TEU. Operations are expected to commence in 2021.
It will form part of an integrated industrial city to help foster economic development of Nigeria, particularly the southern and south-eastern regions of the country.
The project started in May 2015, when the IDSP PPP procurement was approved by the Federal Executive Council. In January 2018, a request for quotation was issued, to which 8 applications were received. Three applicants were shortlisted as bidders to proceed to the Request for Proposal stage, which started in April and ended in September 2018 with official opening of the competing bids. A rigorous evaluation of the bids, which was conducted in line with international best practices, has culminated in the selection of Bollore–PowerChina Consortium as the Preferred Bidder and China Harbour Engineering Company Ltd. as the Reserved Bidder.
Bollore Africa Logistics is the leading port operator in Africa and a part of French-based Bollore Transport and Logistics, which ranks among the world’s top-20 port operators. PowerChina International Group Ltd is the core business of Power Construction Corporation of China which is the world’s top hydropower, electric power, and infrastructure construction group.