Belgian company behind Swansea tidal lagoon concerns named

Jan de Nul bid for contracts worth £500m

The Jan de Nul Group is the Belgian company behind concerns over making a Chinese company the preferred bidder to build the Swansea Bay tidal lagoon.

It queried a potential conflict of interest surrounding the award of the contract to China Harbour Engineering.

It said it had concerns about a long-term partnership between CHEC and Atkins, the designated engineer.

Atkins said it did not collaborate with CHEC on this project. The tender was "robust" said Tidal Lagoon Swansea Bay.

Jan de Nul said it expressed concerns about the process to the Belgian government, which has written formally to the UK Government asking whether the procedure was fair to all the companies bidding.

The Belgian company claimed Atkins would have been instrumental in the scoring of those bids but Atkins said its role was to "prepare the detailed design specification for the construction work to be put out to tender... assessing each submission against the initial design specification."

It said it was TLSB's decision to choose supplier, and that it had not collaborated with CHEC on the work to date. TLSB said details of each tender were confidential.

The UK Government has yet to respond.