THE AUSTRALIAN Maritime Safety Authority on Thursday (20 June) awarded six regional contracts for maintenance of Australia’s aids to navigation (AtoN) network.
The national network includes lighthouses, marine buoys, beacons, automatic identification systems and met-ocean sensors, divided into eight regions across Australia’s vast coastlines.
Earlier this year, AMSA opened opportunities to the market for eight AtoN contracts, heralding a new sub-divided regional model for the network, following 22 years of AMS Group as the singular maintenance provider for AtoN maintenance nationwide.
AMS Group has been awarded the contracts for regions 1, 2 and 3 (North Queensland, Torres Strait and South Queensland, respectively).
Region 5 – Victoria and Tasmania has been awarded to McElligotts, and Region 6 – South Australia has gone to Maritime Constructions.
The contract for Region 4 – New South Wales was awarded just last week to Solar Technology Australia.
“These are experienced providers of aids to navigation products and services, technical services and logistics,” AMSA said in its announcement via LinkedIn.
“They will each play a part in further strengthening this network which has stood the test of time.”
The contracts for Western Australia and the Northern Territory were yet to be announced as of Thursday afternoon
“The new regional approach for maintenance delivery is more diverse and has opened opportunities for more Australian businesses to increase the skills and experience of their workforce through this incredibly rewarding work,” ASMA said on the AtoN information page of its website.
A separate technical support and logistics provider role – one of the nine contracts in total – has been awarded to Kordia, a New Zealand-owned telecommunications and media company.
The eight regional contracts and separate support contract are set to come into effect from 1 July under the new model.
