Italian utility company Enel HAS announced it will open bidding for its generating company Eurogen, with two groups already saying they would place binding bids for the company.

The interested parties are Sinergia, a consortium made up of Energia Italiana, a holding group led by Cir and Belgium’s Electrabel and Edipower, a consortium of Italian utilities Edison-Sondel , municipal utilities AEM Milan and AEM Turin and Swiss electricity group Atel.

Eurogen has a capacity of 7008MW, including three hydroelectric plants. The company had revenues in 2001 of US$1.34B.

Enel has to sell Eurogen and one more generating company to comply with a law on energy sector liberalisation which requires it to shed 15,000MW of generating capacity by 2003.