58_23 Ready Meals

This REPLACES the previous Prior Information Notice, as tender documentation is now available.

ESPO is seeking to renew its framework agreement for the supply and direct delivery of frozen Ready Meals:

Lot 1 - Single Portion Ready Meals
Lot 2 - Multi-portion meal components

The framework agreement has the option to extend for up to a further 24 months. The total estimated value stated includes the option period.

As part of the on-going contract management process, throughout the period of the Framework Agreement, ESPO shall monitor the financial stability of the awarded Supplier by reference to credit rating agency reports. ESPO shall obtain a credit score for the Supplier on or before the Framework start date as a base score and where a significant change in the credit score is identified over the life of the Framework Agreement, ESPO reserves the right to investigate the reasons for this significant change. Depending on the severity of the changes, it will be at the sole discretion of ESPO to suspend or even permanently remove the Supplier from the Framework Agreement.

Suppliers must have, and retain throughout the framework lifetime, a relevant third party food safety accreditation (such as BRC, STS) in relation to the manufacture and/or storage of Food products. Failure to retain such accreditation must be immediately reported to ESPO and will be at the sole discretion of ESPO to suspend or even permanently remove the Supplier from the Framework Agreement. Certificate copies will be sent to ESPO annually, on the expiry/renewal date of such accreditation.

Please ensure that you access the ITT Event / Activity for the tender documentation. Documents can be found in the first question of the Online Questionnaire, but to see these you will first need to click on "Start my response" followed by "Edit" next to the Question set, and "Answer question" next to the first question. Please refer to the attached guide for further details on accessing the ITT and tender documents (within the Online question set), once an Expression of interest ('register interest’) has been completed. Note: for any questions relating to the operation of the Portal itself, ProContract, these should be submitted to Proactis and the following link (url) can be used for this, for supplier support and system technical queries: https://www.proactis.com/uk/en/support-login/support/.