HEP selects Marubeni as Preferred Bidder for Plomin C coal-fired power plant

Croatia's power utility firm Hrvatska Elektroprivreda (HEP) said on September 2nd it has selected Japan's Marubeni as the best bidder in the tender for selecting a strategic partner for the construction and operation of the 500 MW Plomin C thermal power plant.

HEP received three bids by late April in the second stage of the tender process, the public company said in a statement. The other bidders were a consortium made up of Spain's Abeinsa and South Korea's Daewoo and third came Italy's Edison.

HEP said that during this phase it started a negotiation process with all three bidders, carried out an in depth analysis of the proposals and requested and received additional information from the bidders.

The Croatian company also said that it will continue negotiations with Marubeni, hoping to complete them by the end of the year. It is expected that contract is signed at the beginning of next year.

Plomin C is one of Croatia’s strategic national projects. The future strategic partner will design, engineer, finance, build and operate a 500MW coal-fired power plant in the Istria County. The future plant is valued at €800 million, and is expected to significantly reduce Croatia’s electricity imports, as well as increase the existing Plomin complex capacity to 710MW.