Bahrain’s Tender Board has delayed the deadline for bids on the Muharraq wastewater treatment plant project until 2010, according to sources close to the scheme.

The board has changed the deadline from 28 October to 20 January 2010.

The Works Ministry is managing construction of a 100,000-cubic-metre-a-day wastewater treatment plant on a build-own-operate basis.

The winning firm will also build a deep-gravity sewer network, where the wastewater moves by the power of gravity, on a build-own-operate-transfer basis.

The board decided to extend the bid deadline because the Works Ministry failed to publish a report on soil investigation, in time. The ministry had planned to issue the report in the first week of September.

Various groups held meetings with the ministry in early July.

They include  France’s Veolia Water with Singapore’s Keppel Seghers Engineering; Degremont, also of France, with Japan’s Sumitomo Corporation; Spain’s Acciona Agua with Kuwait Finance House; the German/UAE joint venture Metito Berlinwasser; and the UK’s Biwater Construction.

Other bidders include a team of Spain’s Aqualia with the US’ Four Winds Capital Management; Spain’s Grupo Fomento De Construcciones y Contratas; Saudi Arabia’s Nesma & Partners and Bahrain’s Zero Waste Bluewater Bio; Saudi Oger with Korea Water Resources Corporation and South Korea’s Samsung C&T Corporation; the UK’s United Utilities with South Korea’s Samsung Engineering Company and Bahrain’s Instrata Capital; Malaysia’s YTL Power International with the UK’s Wessex Water; and Kuwait’s Kharafi National.