Holding Slovenske Elektrarne submitted the best price offer of EUR 85.1mn for the full stake in the heating and thermo-power plant in the country's fifth largest city of Ruse . The price is a major evaluation criterion and the Slovenian company will be almost certainly announced as a winner in the tender. Dalkia International and E.ON offered EUR 50.05mn and EUR 29.1mn, respectively. The fourth candidate admitted to the privatisation tender, the Czech Electricity Company, did not submit a bid. The privatisation agency opened the acquisition offers on Nov 17 after a two-week extension of the initial deadline. It plans to sign a draft sale contract by the end of the year and to finalise the share transfer shortly after, following approvals by the supervisory board of the agency and the antitrust watchdog. The total electricity production capacity of the coal- and gas-fired units is 400MW but only a small part of some 54MW is effectively utilised due to environmental considerations and high operational costs dependant on imports of black coal. Most of the equipment is installed in the period of 1964 to 1971 and is incompatible with today's efficiency and environment standards.

The head of the privatisation agency, Todor Nikolov, comments that the price offered by the Slovenian company exceeds his expectations. The plant in Ruse was auctioned for the first time in April last year. Russia 's electricity company RAO UES won the bidding at the price of EUR 120mn but withdrew its offer shortly after. The second-ranked CEZ offered EUR 24.3mn at that time while the third-ranked Italian company Enel valued the plant at just EUR 4.8mn. The tender was scrapped after the withdrawal of the Russians, as the other bids were seen as unacceptable. In the meanwhile, the privatisation agency has separated the smaller western unit for gas-fired heating supplies and has sold it to a local firm at the price of EUR 1.8mn.