LATEST AUSTRALIAN BUSINESS NEWS
The first major phase of a $3 billion investment in the Australian Army's fleet of field vehicles has been released. The three separate Requests for Tender (RFT) have been released on 13 December to replace a vital fleet of Army trucks, four-wheel drives, trailers and modules for the Australian Army's high readiness units. The investment is part of Project Overlander - the largest land project in the Defence Capability Plan worth a total of $3 billion.This current phase is worth up to $600 million and includes replacing the existing high readiness fleet of about 1400 heavy and light vehicles, 1300 trailers and 1200 specialist modules. The next phase will replace the rest of the Australian Army's vehicles, trailers and modules across Australia.
Project Overlander is a key part of the Government's Hardening and Networking strategy that will be released in detail later this month. Favourable consideration will be given to those companies who will assemble the vehicles in Australia. The request for tender for the trailer segment will be restricted to Australian-based manufacturers, plus those vehicle suppliers capable of supplying a proprietary trailer. The request for tender is tailored to encourage the production of trailers in Australia.
The RFT for all three fleet segments will close in May 2006 with detailed proposals presented to Government in 2007. The target date for delivery of the first of the vehicles is December 2009. Each RFT will also require offers to be made on support of the fleet, and will seek an agreement to guarantee the whole of life acquisition and logistic support of the new fleet, potentially for the next 30 years.
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David