Plovdiv Steam Heating Plant - Bulgaria's privatisation agency expects prospective investors to place indicative bids for a steam heating plant in the country's second largest city of Plovdiv by October 9. The agency announced the tender for the sale of 100% of the Plovdiv electricity and heating plant earlier in July, but the actual bidding process started on July 21, when the tender invitation was published in the State Gazette. Companies interested in the Plovdiv steam heating plant should buy tender documentation until August 10. They can visit the plant's data room by October 4. Expectedly foreign energy majors like Austria's EVN, Italy's Enel, Germany's E.On, France's Dalkia and Russia's Gazprom would be interested to buy the Plovdiv plant.

Eligible bidders are electricity and steam heating producers and distributors with sales of at least 600,000 megawatt hours (MWh) of electricity or 1.8 million MWh of heating power for the last three fiscal years. The bidders should have had revenues of no less than 100 million levs from their core activity for the same period. The candidates should have a long-term credit rating not lower than 'BB+' of Standard and Poor's and Fitch Ratings, or 'Ba1' of Moody's. No offshore companies would be allowed to bid.

The Plovdiv steam heating plant has a registered capital of 25.9 million levs ($16.8 million/13.2 million euro ). It operates the Plovdiv North thermal power plant with an installed capacity of 214 megawatts, a steam-heating generation unit Plovdiv South and a heating distribution company. It runs mainly on natural gas.