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March 6, 2013

Province to reopen Maine-N.S. ferry service bids

Neither bid to restart a ferry service between Portland and Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, won the approval of officials in that Canadian province, prompting the reopening of bidding for a $21 million provincial subsidy to restart the service.

The Bangor Daily News reported that Nova Scotia officials found proposals by Eliot-based Quest Navigation Inc. and Baltimore-based Maritime Applied Physics Corp. fell short of the project's minimum criteria.

Late last year, the province announced its interest in finding a contractor willing to restart the service that ceased operations in 2010. A previous effort late that year to restart the service failed after provincial officials found that five proposals lacked adequate financing.

In a statement Tuesday, Quest Navigation CEO Mark Amundsen said the company plans to resubmit a proposal after reviewing new project outlines from Nova Scotia officials.

In February, Quest announced leasing a ship it plans to use to run the ferry service. The competing proposal from MAPC, which has an office in Brunswick, also included a partnership arrangement to run its proposed ferry service.

The paper reported that Percy Paris, Nova Scotia's minister of economic and rural development and tourism, said he could not detail specifics of why the province's evaluation committee rejected both proposals.

Percy said that the province's new request for proposals will seek to restart service in 2014, not 2013 as in the previous RFP, which he expects will bring in more bidders.

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