Seine Nord Europe Canal out to tender

The Canal has a €2.6bn budget funded by the EU, the French government, local governments and partially by public-private partnerships. It is intended to expand trade in an environmentally efficient manner, removing thousands of trucks from the roads.

The 106km canal will feature seven single chamber locks with water saving basins, two water storage reservoirs, three aqueducts, four multi-modal platforms, seven loading/unloading quays, five boat harbours and 360 hectares of industrial ports.

Voies Navigables de France (VNF), the French authority for inland waterways and the developer of the Seine Nord Europe Canal, launched the public call for tender last month, with a closing date of 15 June for the design, construction, operation, maintenance, regeneration and the financing of the canal, in the context of a public private partnership.

The selected group of companies should be able to start work in 2011, with the canal opening in 2015. The project will create about 10,000 direct jobs during the construction phase of the canal, including 4,500 jobs directly on the construction site starting in 2011.

Seine-Nord Europe is a flagship project of the ‘Grenelle de l’Environnement’. It will support the sustainable economic development of the territories through which it passes and will contribute to revitalizing economic growth at French and European levels. It is one of the projects selected to contribute to the French economic recovery and will contribute to reaching the objective set by the French government of increasing the modal share of sustainable modes of transport to 25% by2020.

Seine Nord Europe will also be a catalyst for a large number of projects related to tourism, urban planning, water management, renewable energies and to economic development with the four multimodal platforms.