Supply and Provision of Book Publication and Fulfilment Services

The United Kingdom Hydrographic Office (UKHO) is a Trading Fund of the Ministry of Defence (MOD). Its primary role is to meet national, defence and civil needs for navigational and other hydrographic information in the most efficient manner. The UKHO’s route to market is using a worldwide network of 127 distributors.

The UKHO is intending to outsource its traditional paper navigational books which are currently being produced using lithographic machines printing circa 1.3m publications each year, with an average weekly despatch of 21,500 volumes. Distributors are responsible for the collection of packaged goods and transit. We currently offer a distribution service which approximately 50% of our distributors use. Majority of these publications are classified as Safety Of Life At Sea (SOLAS) carriage compliant, which means that commercial vessels legally have to carry them on board.

The UKHO is looking for a 3rd party to offer a full book publication and fulfilment service using print-ready files provided by the UKHO via Azure Cloud or secure FTP site. The successful Contract will be for a period of 5 years, starting in 2016, with options to extend for a further 4 years.

The Contractor will have access to information that is confidential to the Authority and its distributors. Accordingly, interested parties are advised that distributors of the Authority’s nautical publications and any economic operators affiliated to such distributors will be excluded from this award procedure, whether as sole tenderers or as members of consortia. The Authority reserves the right to determine, in its sole discretion, whether an economic operator falls into this excluded category of economic operators.

Further details and tender documents can be found at: https://ukhocontracts.ukho.gov.uk/procontract/ukho/supplier.nsf/frm_home?openForm