Consultant Needed - Technical Assistance for Product Development - LED Project - RFP 13

Section 1: Instructions to Offerors

1. Introduction: Berytech, acting on behalf of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and the Lebanon Enterprise Development (LED) Project, under contract number AID-268-C-17-00001, is soliciting proposals from Lebanese Individual Consultant that can support our clients on the below scope of work.

Offerors are responsible for ensuring that their offers are received by Berytech in accordance with the instructions, terms, and conditions described in this RFP. Failure to adhere with instructions described in this RFP may lead to disqualification of an offer from consideration. 

Offerors should take note that this RFP does not obligate Berytech to execute a subcontract nor does it commit Berytech to pay for any costs incurred in the preparation and submission of any proposals for this solicitation. Furthermore, Berytech reserves the right to reject any and all offers, if such action is considered to be in the best interest of Berytech.

Quotations: Quotations in response to this RFP must be priced on a Level-of-effort (Number of working days ) term contract, all-inclusive basis, including delivery and all other costs. Pricing must be presented in USD and offers must remain valid for not less than 60 calendar days after the offer deadline. Offerors are requested to provide quotations on their official quotation format or letterhead;

In addition, offerors responding to this RFP are requested to submit the following:

• Copy of CV
• Copy of education certificates
• Previous work experience
• Copy of passport/ID 
• MOF registration (if applicable) 

Taxes and VAT: The agreement under which this procurement is financed is not exempt from the payment of taxes, tariffs, duties, or other levies imposed by any laws in effect in the Cooperating Country.  Therefore, offerors must include taxes, charges, tariffs, duties and levies in accordance with the laws of the Cooperating Country.

According to the Lebanese Law a 7.5% will be deducted as Non- Resident tax from Individuals

who are not registered.

Eligibility: By submitting an offer in response to this RFP, the offeror certifies that it and its principal officers are not debarred, suspended, or otherwise considered ineligible for an award by the U.S. Government. Berytech will not award a contract to any firm that is debarred, suspended, or considered to be ineligible by the U.S. Government.

Evaluation Criteria: The award will be made to a responsible offeror whose offer follows the RFP instructions, meets the eligibility requirements, and is determined via a trade-off analysis to be the best value based on application of the following evaluation criteria. The relative importance of each individual criterion is indicated by the number of points below

1. Cost (Daily Rate x Man-days): 25 Points
2. Man-days reasonableness: 10 Points

2. Offeror’s qualification, expertise & past experience: 20 Points 

3. Scope of Work: 20 Points 

4. Site Visit & Client feedback: 20 Points 

5. Timeline: 5 Points (To be Executed by Maximum June 2022)

Follow-up discussions may be conducted with several Consultant(s) to resolve any questions, finalize the scope of work and agreement on final not-to-exceed costs as a means to recommend final selection to Berytech.

Please note that if there are significant deficiencies regarding responsiveness to the requirements of this RFP, an offer may be deemed “non-responsive” and thereby disqualified from consideration. Berytech reserves the right to waive immaterial deficiencies at its discretion.

Best-offer quotations are requested. It is anticipated that award will be made solely on the basis of these original quotations. However, Berytech reserves the right to conduct any of the following:

• Berytech may conduct negotiations with and/or request clarifications from any offeror prior to award.
• While preference will be given to offerors who can address the full technical requirements of this RFP, Berytech may issue a partial award or split the award among various suppliers, if in the best interest of the Lebanon LED Project.
• Berytech may cancel this RFP at any time.

Please note that in submitting a response to this RFP, the offeror understands that Chemonics and USAID are not a party to this solicitation and the offeror agrees that any protest hereunder must be presented—in writing with full explanations—to Berytech for consideration, as Chemonics and USAID will not consider protests regarding procurements carried out by implementing partners. Berytech, at its sole discretion, will make a final decision on the protest for this procurement.

Terms and Conditions: This is a Request for Proposal only. Issuance of this RFP does not in any way obligate Berytech, the Lebanon Enterprise Development (LED) Project, or USAID to make an award or pay for costs incurred by potential offerors in the preparation and submission of an offer.

This solicitation is subject to Berytech’s standard terms and conditions. Any resultant award will be governed by these terms and conditions; a copy of the full terms and conditions is available upon request.

Section 2: Offer Checklist

To assist offerors in preparation of proposals, the following checklist summarizes the documentation to include an offer in response to this RFP:

• Offer Cover Letter
• SOW
• Timeline
• Man-days
• Cost in USD
• Copy of CV
• Copy of education certificates
• Previous work experience
• Copy of passport/ID 
• MOF registration (if applicable) 

Section 3: Scope of Work
 

1. Sreik EST (North Lebanon, Akkar, Halba)

The owner of Sreik came back to Lebanon after years of experience in food processing entities in countries abroad and decided to open Sreik in Akkar, North Lebanon. Akkar was the area selected because it is the area where the owner comes from, and because he and his partners in the company believe that Akkar has all sorts of suppliers that they need and that operating costs for a food processing factory are lower than Beirut or other cities in Lebanon.

In the first stages of production, the products manufactured were natural and industrial pomegranate molasses. The 2 products got great feedback in the early stages, and they entered the market and generated more income than what the owner expected. After that, the management decided to add new lines to their production operations. After studies done in their target markets, and assessments of the raw material needed the management decided to start manufacturing white vinegar, red vinegar, cucumber pickles, wild cucumber pickles, mixed pickles, hot pepper pickles, cornichon, and spiced olives. Nowadays, Sreik has more than 10 types of products in the market, and their market share is growing month after month due to the high quality of products yet affordable prices for the customers.

Sreik management strategy is to encourage sustainable agriculture and increasing farmers' competitiveness in Akkar through the creation of local market demand for all vegetables and fruits that the factory needs, as they only purchase raw material from farmers in the Akkar region. In addition to that, they directly sign contracts with the farmers themselves and not through brokers and the goal of that is to increase the profit margin that the farmer has. Moreover, Sreik only employs people from the Akkar area, to help create new jobs and new economic opportunities that will limit rural migration even if on a small scale.

LED will cost-share with Sreik to hire a consultant that will work with the company to build proper formulas to be used once manufacturing balsamic sauce and bouillon cubes, and will help modify the formulations of industrial pomegranate molasses, and cucumber pickles. The management of Sreik stated that they have minimal experience in building the formulations for balsamic sauce and b`ouillon cubes and that they do not have room for trial and error and that is why they require to allocate a consultant or expert that will guide them to the proper formulations of these two products. On the other hand, industrial pomegranate molasses and cucumber pickles are already manufactured in the factory of Sreik but the management is facing conflicts in modifying their recipes based on the reviews they get from the market so the consultant will help the company decrease the sweet taste of the industrial pomegranate molasses and will help in modifying the production formulation used to manufacture cucumber pickles because they are facing some fermentation issues.

Sreik has the confidence that the mentioned products have high potential in their export market and getting to a point where they could manufacture the mentioned products is a big upgrade in the career of the company because it will increase the company’s value and widen its market exponentially in the long term. Moreover, the Lebanese market has a huge gap in the supply of the mentioned products, and such products are barely manufactured in Lebanon and are mostly imported, so giving Sreik the chance to manufacture such products and make them available in the local market will help substitute some imports with products manufactured in Lebanon.

Site Visit

Site visit or conference call with the client for this requirement is mandatory. If you submit a tender without having attended the site visit or making a conference call, your bid may be deemed non-compliant and will not be considered.

To arrange a visit or conference call, please coordinate with our business advisor for each client before the deadline. Depending on the situation, each client has the right to take conference calls

instead of site visit. The client has the right to stop meeting consultants/consultancy firm at his disclosure.

Client

Business Advisor

Tel

Sreik

Hussein Sheet

+961 70 516 905

Scope of Work:

Each consultant should submit a proposal that include a detailed SOW accompanied with price for each technical assistant.

N.B: Before awarding the contract for the winning vendor please be reminded that the SOW hence deliverables will be divided between LED and the client firm. The consultant will sign two separate contracts for the SOW:

1. A contract to be signed with Berytech that represents most of the technical assistance deliverables and;
2. A contract to be signed with the client firm to represent the deliverables for the client cost share part.