A spreadsheet error has cost Finnish manufacturer Kalmar Finland Oy a Sh947 million Kenya Ports Authority (KPA) contract for supply of 14 container-handling machines.
The Court of Appeal upheld the rejection of Kalmar’s bid after it changed the tender quantity section from 14 reachstackers to one in its pricing schedule.
The judges ruled that the mistake, which Kalmar described as typographical, was a material deviation that could not be corrected after bids were opened.
The three-judge bench dismissed Kalmar’s appeal and affirmed earlier decisions by the Public Procurement Administrative Review Board and the High Court, leaving intact the award of the tender to Amberton Holdings FZC, the authorised representative of Chinese manufacturer Shanghai Port Machinery Heavy Industries, commonly known as ZPMC.
The dispute arose from KPA’s restricted tender for the supply, testing and commissioning of 14 new reachstackers. The tender was advertised in December 2025. Reachstackers are heavy-duty vehicles used in ports to lift, transport, and stack shipping containers.
The procurement was limited to four original equipment manufacturers already operating at the port, including Kalmar, Sany, Hyster and ZPMC. The tender documents also allowed those manufacturers to bid directly or through authorised agents.
Kalmar submitted the lowest bid at $5.83 million (Sh754.6 million), while Amberton quoted $7.31 million (Sh947 million). However, KPA disqualified Kalmar during financial evaluation after finding that its pricing schedule changed the preset quantity from 14 machines to one.
The Court of Appeal agreed that the error affected the substance of the bid rather than its form.
“The appellant’s pricing schedule modifications were severe and went to the very heart of the contractual scope,” the judges said. They added that changing the quantity from 14 reachstackers to one amounted to “a major material deviation.”
The court rejected Kalmar’s argument that KPA should have sought clarification before rejecting the bid. It said procurement law did not permit the authority to repair a defective financial schedule after sealed bids had been opened.
“The judge found that KPA had no legal authority to proactively clarify the errors,” the judgment said. Allowing a bidder to fix such defects later “would give them an unfair competitive advantage” and undermine an equitable and transparent procurement system.
Kalmar also challenged Amberton’s eligibility, arguing that the tender had been restricted to four manufacturers and that Amberton was only a trading intermediary incorporated in the United Arab Emirates.
The appellate judges rejected that argument. They found Amberton had produced a valid manufacturer’s authorisation from ZPMC under the tender terms and therefore lawfully participated as the manufacturer’s authorised representative.
The court also rejected Kalmar’s contention that its lower price should have secured the contract.
“There was no automatic right for the lowest bid,” the judges said, adding that “value for money cannot be extracted from a non-responsive bid.”
“We must state with finality that value for money cannot be extracted from a non-responsive bid. Financial competitiveness can only be legally considered among bids that have cleanly passed the preliminary and technical responsiveness benchmarks,” said the court.
It added that to force a public entity to award a contract based on a low price at the expense of compliance, operational viability, and parts interchangeability would completely undermine the integrity of national public economic interests. The appeal was dismissed, with the Court of Appeal affirming the procurement process and the award made by KPA.
