Earlier in April, driven by curiosity at a throw-away remark by Douglas Fraser at the end of a recent BBC Business Scotland programme, that CalMac CEO, Martin Dorchester had told him at the end of an interview transmitted in the programme, that the company was looking at going for contracts outside Scotland, For Argyll did some serious Googling and came up with a possible target.
The article we then published, CalMac: the Douglas Fraser teaser, suggested that a possible target for CalMac might have been the Swedish Government’s reissued tender for the triangular vehicle and passenger ferry service between the Swedish mainland south of Stockholm to the island of Gotland.
Shortly after this article was published, we were contacted by a Swedish journalist based in Gothenburg, who had been directed to our piece by Google Alerts and who confirmed that our detective work was on the money – that CalMac was indeed a bidder for this service.
We kept this to ourselves, waiting to see if CalMac would come out to play and discuss their bid and the strategy that had led to their initiative in bidding for offshore contracts.
Earlier today, we were contacted by the same journalist, who told us that the result of the tender is now locally known and that the former operator – Destination Gotland – whose reord in financial management had recently come under serious question by the Swedish Government, has neverthless been re-awarded the contract.
There is bound to be the usual ‘cooling off’ period before the contract award can be confirmed and during which dissatsfied competitors may lodge objections.
There may well be room for an objection. The parent company of the winning bidder, Rederi AB Gotland, said during what was a prolonged and stop-start bidding process, that it was not prepared to accept the tender preconditions imposed by the Swedish Government. Does the award to that company mean that special accommodation was made for the position of one of the competing bidders but not necessarily the other?
The contest for the ten year contract apparently dropped one of three bidders, leaving a face off between Calmac and Rederi AB Gotland’s Destination Gotland subsidiary.
Yesterday we asked Calmac if they intend to object but have not yet received a reply. We asked a range of questions at the same time, because this offshore adventure raises all sorts of fascinating issues.
- Has this been the first of other offshore bids to follow?
- What has been CalMac’s thinking behind this initiative, as a Scottish Government-owned, publicly funded company whose core function is the provision of lifeline ferry servics on the Scottish west coast?
- As CalMac’s sole shareholder, what was the Scottish Government’s response to the intention to bid offshore? It would have had to be consulted.
- What did the bidding process cost – a matter of public interest since the company is funded by public money. [We assume that the company’s intention was to win the contract while seeing the bidding process as a ‘tuning up’ opportunity for the bid-writing team CalMac has established in readiness for the upcoming Clyde and Hebridean Ferry Services tender.
- Had the process been found to be valuable experience for the company and for the bid-writing team?
We understand from our Swedish source that CalMac’s presence as a bidder for the Gotland service was locally intriguing and widely welcomed. It was seen as a rather exotic surprise, literally coming out of the west, raising interest in the bidding process and attracting supporters in its signal experience in serving island audiences.
So the exercise seems to have brought CalMac a wider public profile, made them friends in new places – and brought For Argyll a new friend where we had not expected one.
