Awarded without open competition
Awarded without open competition. The buyer went directly to one or a few suppliers instead of advertising the contract. Procurement rules allow this only in specific cases, such as extreme urgency, when only one supplier can do the work, or for call-offs from an existing framework.
Key facts
- Buyer
- The Board of Trustees of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew · Ministry or any other national or federal authority, including their regional or local subdivisions
- Supplier
- Southern Scientific Limited SME
- Value
- £150,000
- Procedure
- Award procedure without prior publication of a call for competition
- Sector
- Medical equipment & pharmaceuticals · X-ray devices (CPV 33111000)
- Region
- North East
- Official notice
- 007729-2026 on Find a Tender
- Timeline
-
- Contract date9 Dec 2025
- Published28 Jan 2026Published 50 days after the contract date
Description
The Millennium Seed Bank laboratories (RBG Kew) are seeking to update their X-Ray Machine to continue supporting the assessment of quality seed collections during the cleaning and processing stage to assess the final number of "good" seeds prior to banking, which allows to keep the collections to be kept at top quality. Market route via Single Tender Action is justified because early market engagement demonstrated that competition is absent for technical reasons, with no reasonable alternative or substitute available that can meet RBG Kew's combined scientific and IT compliance requirements.
About the supplier
Southern Scientific Limited: every public contract they have won, plus their Companies House record (company 01800317).