The Kuwait Authority for Partnership Projects (KAPP) has selected a consortium to develop the planned Kabd municipal solid waste project, which will be developed under a public-private partnership (PPP) model.

According to a statement from state-owned Kuwait News Agency (Kuna), a consortium led by France’s Constructions Industrielles de La Mediterranee (CNIM) has been selected to develop the waste-to-energy project, which is planned to have an initial capacity of 3,275 tonnes a day (t/d) and will treat up to half of the country’s municipal waste.

According to the Kuna statement, the project will be developed under a 25-year power purchase agreement (PPA), under which the Ministry of Electricity & Water (MEW) will be the offtaker. The construction period of the scheme is estimated to be 44 months.

Following the selection of the consortium, KAPP has now sent the relevant documents to the State Audit Bureau (SAB) for final approval before the contract is formally awarded. This process is expected to take a few months.

The commercial bids for the project were opened on 19 March, with a consortium led by Austria’s EVN Umweltholding and Betriebs submitting the lowest offer of KD242.75m ($796m).

KAPP, formerly called the Partnerships Technical Bureau (PTB), invited companies to prequalify for the Kabd scheme in May 2015. This was the second time the prequalification process was conducted for the project, with firms originally invited to prequalify for the scheme in March 2014. The advisers for the Kabd project are the UK’s PwC and Ashurst, and Germany’s Fichtner.

The original deadline for proposals for the scheme was in March 2016, but bidders asked for more time due to the complexity of the project.

Interestingly, KAPP selected the consortium for the Kabd project just days before the tender for the planned Al-Zour North 2 independent water and power project (IWPP) was cancelled, some 14 months after prices had been submitted.

In a statement published on Kuna’s website on 24 August, it was announced the tender for the Al-Zour North 2 scheme, the country’s second planned IWPP, had been cancelled and that KAPP was planning to integrate the previously planned Al-Zour North 2 and 3 IWPPs into one project, which will be retendered as one project.

Following revisions to the country’s PPP law and the rebranding of the country’s PPP body in 2014, the Al-Zour North 2 project was regarded as a trailblazer scheme for the rest of the country’s multibillion-dollar PPP programme.