Decision due in two weeks on sole bid for liquor marketing contract
Pine State Trading Co., which lost its 10-year contract to market Maine’s state-run liquor business in early June after acknowledging it had made a clerical error in its accepted bid, is the only company to submit a proposal in the new bidding process that closed on July 25.
“Regardless of the fact that we have received only one proposal, that does not guarantee they’ll receive the contract,” David Heidrich Jr., assistant director of communications at the Maine Department of Administrative and Financial Services, told Mainebiz in a phone voice message on Thursday. “The proposal will be reviewed and scored to make sure it meets the requirements of the state, just like we would for any RFP response.”
Heidrich said Pine State’s proposal would be reviewed “within the next two weeks.” Once a decision is reached, he said, details of the proposal and how it was scored by the state would become public.
A phone message left for Pine State CEO Nick Alberding, one of Pine State’s co-owners, had not been returned this morning.
In early June, the Bureau of Alcoholic Beverages and Lottery Operations notified Pine State the 10-year contract that had been awarded to the Gardiner-based distribution and marketing company in February was rescinded due to “inaccurate information” in the vendor’s bid, which incorrectly indicated its market share for liquor sales in New Hampshire was 0.004%, when it actually was 0.4%. Alberding said at that time that the company disclosed the clerical error as soon as it realized its accepted bid had understated the volume of its New Hampshire liquor sales.
A separate 10-year contract to distribute liquor to retailers throughout Maine awarded in January to Pine State was not affected by that error.
The value of the 10-year liquor marketing contract has been pegged between $850,000 and $2 million a year, or 1.5% of the annual net sales of liquor in Maine.
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