No funds for Magħtab waste-to-energy plant project promised in 2017

Malta’s long-delayed waste-to-energy plant at Magħtab will not begin construction this year after the government confirmed that no funds have been allocated for the project in the 2026 budget, raising fresh doubts about the future of the €600 million facility first promised nearly a decade ago.

Energy Minister Miriam Dalli told Parliament that the absence of funds reflects the reality that the project will not move into its construction phase in 2026. Instead, only preparatory studies and consultancy work will be carried out this year.

The confirmation came in response to a parliamentary question by Nationalist Party MP Rebekah Borg, who asked why the government had failed to allocate any capital expenditure for the long-promised facility.

Dalli explained that the government had recently been forced to abort the latest procurement process for the project after the third tender issued for the plant was mismanaged and collapsed just weeks ago.

The waste-to-energy plant, which was originally announced in 2017, is intended to convert non-recyclable waste into electricity and reduce Malta’s dependence on landfills. At full capacity, it is expected to generate enough energy to power around 25,000 households annually.

However, almost nine years after it was first proposed, the project remains stuck in procurement limbo.

The most recent tender process, launched in 2023 by state waste agency Wasteserv, ended without a successful award after a series of legal disputes and bidder withdrawals.

Initially, the contract had been awarded to a consortium made up of French waste management company Paprec and local contractor Bonnici Group for a reported €600 million. Their bid was the lowest among the three offers submitted.

But the process quickly ran into difficulties after rival bidder Hitachi Zosen Inova, which has since rebranded as Kanadevia, challenged the award, arguing that the evaluation process was flawed.

Although the complaint was initially dismissed by the government-appointed Public Contracts Review Board (PCRB), Maltese courts later overturned that decision, forcing the evaluation process to start again.

A second evaluation board once again selected the Paprec-Bonnici consortium.

Yet the legal wrangling continued, and the consortium eventually dropped out of the process earlier this year after failing to renew its bid as required under public procurement rules.

The tender then effectively fell to the runner-up bidder, Kanadevia, which had submitted a much higher bid of around €781 million. However, the company attempted to renew its offer subject to changes in contract conditions, including revisions to technical specifications.

Wasteserv, managed by government appointee Richard Bilocca, rejected the request, insisting that procurement rules do not allow bidders to attach new conditions after submitting an offer.

With no compliant bids remaining, the agency formally scrapped the tender altogether, wasting another three years.

The collapse of the procurement process has pushed the project back to the drawing board, almost a decade after the government first announced plans for the incinerator as a cornerstone of Malta’s waste management strategy.

In the meantime, the project’s repeated delays have raised concerns about Malta’s continued reliance on landfill sites and the growing costs of meeting European Union waste targets.

Industry observers also note that waste treatment technologies have evolved significantly since the project was first conceived in 2017, with the EU increasingly encouraging member states to explore cleaner and more environmentally friendly alternatives such as waste-to-chemicals processes rather than traditional incineration.

So far, the Government has not stated when it intends to issue a new tender and which technology it will be going for.