The winner of the five-billion tender of the state enterprise Lesy České republiky (LČR) for forestry work and the sale of wood for 2021 to 2025 is the mining company Uniles which is owned by Agrofert. In the 2021+ tender, Uniles submitted the best price offer for twelve of the 29 competing units and has a chance to win 12 contracts.
Kloboucká lesní finished behind Uniles with the best offer in five units and Aclesia to win four contracts. Ten companies out of 36 that have signed up for the tender are hoping to win at least one deal. A total of 190 companies submitted bids. In tender 2021+, the estimated value of forestry work is CZK 4.5 billion, and the volume of wood to be harvested is six million cubic meters.
The deadline for submitting bids for the tender expired today at 10:00. Subsequently, Lesy ČR began to evaluate the offers. The winning companies should start working for Lesy ČR from the beginning of January next year.
Uniles has been successful in the tenders of Lesy ČR in the past. In last year’s 2020+ tender, it placed second to third with five signed units, together with Kloboucká lesní. Last year’s winner of the 2020+ tender, the mining group Petra z Hodonín, does not have the best bid submitted for any unit this year. Last year, it signed contracts for ten of the 54 competing units.
The orders in tender 2021+ were divided by Lesy ČR into three types according to how the barking disaster affected the area. Uniles succeeded in all three types. Uniles was also the company that submitted the most offers of all competitors bidding on 25 of 29 units.
Last year, Uniles tripled its profit to CZK 48.9 million year-on-year, which was a record. The company’s revenues fell by 1.6 percent to 2.27 billion crowns last year, the company said in an annual report placed in the Collection of Documents. Last year, the company harvested and traded 1.4 million cubic meters of firewood.
The 2021+ competition concerns logging on 188,012 hectares of forest, about 16 percent of all forests managed by the Czech Republic. 1.2 million cubic meters of timber are planned to be harvested, and 1,534 hectares of afforestation are planned annually. Lesy ČR will conclude five-year contracts at 28 units and one-year contracts at one unit.
Tender 2021+ fits into the five-year system of competitions, in which each year, the management of almost one-fifth of the territory of the Forests of the Czech Republic is decided in the so-called Senate manner. The tenders do not include areas managed by the LČR forest plants.
Lesy CR owns almost half of the forests, and their current main task is to manage the bark beetle calamity.
