Exclusive | Chinese firm Nuctech wins EU tenders despite subsidies inquiry
Scanner maker awarded over €15 million in EU-financed contracts for equipment at Italian ports
Nuctech won two tenders in September to provide scanning equipment to Italy’s Customs and Monopolies Agency, according to documents obtained by the South China Morning Post.
One contract – to supply six wheel-mounted mobile scanning systems to inspect trucks in a range of Italian ports – was awarded, with Nuctech’s bid of €11.28 million plus value-added tax well under the tender’s asking price of slightly more than €18 million. With a near-perfect evaluation score of 99.06 from the procurement authorities, it beat the second-placed bidder, the Italian arm of Britain’s Smiths Detection, which scored 96.50.
Nuctech was also awarded a second contract, this one for four mobile scanners that use “backscatter” technology – producing chalklike X-ray images of the item or person scanned – that are to be used by Italian customs offices. The company bid €4.779 million, just under the €4.82 million asking price.
Assessments of the bids showed Nuctech out-performing rivals on its “technical offer”, which accounted for 80 per cent of the evaluation criteria and suggested that the Chinese firm committed to delivering and installing the equipment quicker. In both tenders, competitors Distek and Smiths Detection scored better on price, which was given a weighting of 20 per cent on both awards.
In both instances, the funds are to come from the European Commission’s Customs Control Equipment Instrument (CCEI) budget, a €1 billion programme adopted in 2021 that seeks to upgrade and harmonise the bloc’s customs systems.
