Department of Health and Social Care

39 Victoria Street

London

SW1H 0EU

UK

E-mail: procurement.operations@dhsc.gov.uk

NUTS: UKI32

Internet address(es)

Main address: https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/department-of-health-and-social-care

Address of the buyer profile: https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/department-of-health-and-social-care

II.1.1) Title

II.1.2) Main CPV code

33140000

II.1.3) Type of contract

Supplies

II.1.4) Short description

Supply of saline filled tubes and funnels for Covid-19 testing.

II.1.6) Information about lots

This contract is divided into lots: No

II.1.7) Total value of the procurement

Value excluding VAT: 115 752 000.00  GBP

IV.1.1) Type of procedure

Award of a contract without prior publication of a call for competition

Justification for selected award procedure:

Extreme urgency brought about by events unforeseeable for the contracting authority and in accordance with the strict conditions stated in the Directive

Explanation

Negotiated procedure without prior publication

1) The Covid-19 outbreak is a Public Health Emergency of International Concern as declared by the World Health Organisation on 30 January 2020.

2) A key element of ensuring an effective response to the pandemic is ensuring adequate testing. Subsequently securing sufficient Covid sampling consumables in order to process test results is crucial. A significant constraint on building capacity is timelines for filling and capping machinery. When investigating available delivery capacity, capacity availability was identified with the supplier that presented and an opportunity arose to secure additional volumes of sample collection consumables ahead of lead times being provided by alternative suppliers. There is an ongoing gap between the daily capacity requirement for these consumables, with this contract accounting for c15 % of the capacity gap if the capacity slot can be secured.

3) DHSC is satisfied the tests permitting use of the negotiated procedure without prior publication (Regulation 32(2)(c)) are met.

A. As far as is strictly necessary: increased supply of Covid sampling consumables to meet the increased number of tests now required was identified as strictly necessary to meet the demand to scale up the testing programme in the UK.

B. There are genuine reasons for extreme urgency: it is responding to Covid-19 immediately because of public health risks presenting a genuine emergency. Sample collection consumables (i.e. tubes, swabs, and funnels) are a fundamental component in facilitating mass testing. Volume projections on supply of sampling consumables show a deficit vs. supply for the sample collection consumables.

C. The events that have led to the need for extreme urgency were unforeseeable: the Commission itself confirmed: ‘The current Coronavirus crisis presents an extreme and unforeseeable urgency — precisely for such a situation our European rules enable public buyers to buy within a matter of days, even hours, if necessary.’ (Commissioner Breton, Internal Market, 1 April 2020).

D. It is impossible to comply with the usual timescales in the PCR: It is not possible to comply with the timescales of another procedure due to the urgent requirement to ensure the amount of tests processed increases with the necessary demand.

E. The situation is not attributable to the contracting authority — DHSC has not done anything to cause or contribute to the need for extreme urgency.

IV.1.8) Information about Government Procurement Agreement (GPA)

The procurement is covered by the Government Procurement Agreement: Yes

Origin Packaging Ltd

07097640

Melton House Jackson Way, Melton, North Ferriby

East Riding Of Yorkshire

HU14 3HJ

UK

NUTS: UK

Internet address(es)

URL: https://www.originltd.com/

The contractor is an SME: Yes

VI.4.1) Review body