Bonnici Brothers given €1.2 million tender to transport blackout generators

Bonnici Brothers, whose managing director Gilbert Bonnici is a former business partner of Prime Minister Robert Abela, secured a €1.2 million contract in 2025 just to transport Enemalta’s emergency generators between localities as power failures left residents without electricity.

The expenditure, recorded in newly published procurement information, exposes another layer of the cost of keeping the lights on under Energy Minister Miriam Dalli: moving generators around the country to compensate for a failing distribution network.

The transport bill was separate from hiring the equipment, supplying fuel and keeping it running.

During the same period, Bonnici Brothers received another €28,000 direct order for trailer hire to carry the bulky generators deployed to restore supplies in areas affected by substation outages.

Together, the two awards amounted to €1.228 million for transport and trailers alone.

Government Gazette information also lists a €54,000 direct order to fuel importer Falzon Energy Projects to supply fuel for the emergency generators.

While Enemalta paid to move machinery between blackout-hit localities, it also spent money managing its public message.

Media Insiders, owned by former Times of Malta journalists Steve Mallia and Ariadne Massa, received an €18,000 direct order for media consultancy, including communications concerning electricity distribution works.

That expenditure accompanied Enemalta’s promotion of improvements to the same network whose failures had repeatedly forced households and businesses to depend on emergency generation.

The latest figures add to longstanding questions about the full cost of Enemalta’s response to successive summers of electricity cuts.

Energy Minister Miriam Dalli failed to provide expenditure figures or generator operating hours requested in parliament for 2025 and 2026. Instead, she said the information was being gathered and examined by the National Audit Office.

The lack of disclosure stretches back years.

In 2023, Enemalta declined to provide generator procurement details requested through Freedom of Information, saying they would eventually appear in the Government Gazette.

In July 2024, Enemalta engineers said around 50 hired generators, mainly supplied by Nexos, with others from Bonnici Brothers, could collectively cost thousands an hour when deployed together.

The Bonnici connection to Abela is well documented.

Gilbert Bonnici invested with the prime minister and his wife Lydia in an Iklin property development.