Public procurement notice: Voluntary Ex Ante Transparency Notice
Published: 2023-05-15
Buyer: NORCE Norwegian Research Centre AS
Country: NO
Contract type: Supplies
Procedure: Contract award without prior publication
CPV classification: 38433000 | 38433100
Estimated value: 5700000 NOK

Technical requirements: LC-MS/MS instrument with high mass resolution/accuracy for quantitative analysis and screening analysis
The Norwegian Research Centre (NORCE) intends to enter into a contract with Thermo Fisher Scientific for the procurement of the Orbitrap Exploris 240 mass spectrometer.
To perform the analyses mentioned above, NORCE intends to enter into a contract with Thermo Fisher Scientific for the purchase of the LC-MS/MS instrument Thermo Vanquish Flex UHPLC coupled to an Orbitrap Exploris 240 mass spectrometer with Compound Discoverer 3.3 software. See the annex for more information and justification for the choice of supplier.
To stop this contract from being awarded, a petition for an interim court order must be made to the court.
The deadline for filing an appeal or interim court order is 10 days after the publication of this notice.
Discharges from water treatment plants, agricultural activities and industry are some of the main sources of pollution in the aquatic environment. These sources of environmental pollution can contain large amounts of unknown pollutants from pharmaceuticals, antibiotics, pesticides and industrial chemicals. These substances can be converted into new and unknown metabolites and transformation products, which may be even more persistent and toxic than the initial substances. These compounds will not necessarily be eliminated through wastewater treatment and thus may be discharged as a mixture of hazardous compounds into the aquatic environment, thereby affecting living organisms, including human health. The use of advanced analytical instrumentation such as liquid chromatography coupled with high-resolution mass spectroscopy allows us to carry out further research in this field, enabling the detection and identification of a large number of chemical compounds in a single sample analysis.
To fulfil our needs within method development and analysis, NORCE would like to purchase an LC-MS/MS instrument for the development of target-, suspect-, and non-target screening methods for the detection and identification of a range of known and unknown pollutant compounds in complex environmental matrices. Mass spectrometers based on low mass resolution (such as triple quadrupole) provide very limited selectivity and a high degree of uncertainty in the identification of chemical compounds, as it is not possible to achieve the mass accuracy required to perform untargeted screening analyses. We need sub-ppm mass accuracy and the highest resolving power to reduce the number of tentative element formulas that are detected and to increase the reliability of chemical identification.
Advanced Orbitrap technology combined with the Orbitrap Exploris 240 makes this instrument unique for our application and research on pollutant compounds by combining routine targeted and untargeted analyses, which is because:
- OE240 provides a high mass resolution of 240,000 FWHM at m/z 200, which is necessary to handle matrices and complex compounds and to be able to identify small structural differences and illuminate structures. It is also suitable for complex matrices such as wastewater, surface water, seawater, sediment, biota and soil samples.
- OE240 has a wide range of automatic mass scanning functions. This includes ddMS2 of the top N most intense ions, enabling us to go in depth and study scans with low-intensity peaks in complex arrays. It performs scans in a mass range of 40-6000 m/z, thereby allowing for the detection of larger molecules.
- OE240 performs polarity switching from injection to injection, thereby allowing us to improve routine analyses of positive and negative ions, as well as simplifying the analytical work in the laboratory.
- OE240 includes the all-in-one computing application Compound Discoverer 3.3 for automatic detection and identification of chemical compounds. This is important for facilitating the analysis of small molecules and also includes access to online databases, fragment searches and fragment simulation.
- OE240 is a bench-top instrument, which suits our laboratory, where space is a challenge (HxDxW= 703×763×534 mm).The LC-MS/MS instrument Thermo Vanquish Flex UHPLC coupled to the Orbitrap Exploris 240 mass spectrometer was assessed based on: a) evaluation of the existing high-resolution mass spectrometers available on the market, and b) our long-term experience with Orbitrap technology in research. This instrument will allow us to continue and to develop advanced research in mass spectrometry at NORCE's facilities.
The contracting authority is not aware of any other suppliers in the market providing mass spectrometers in accordance with the specifications set out in this notice. In the preparation work for this notice, extensive market research was carried out to identify whether there may be other providers who can supply an instrument that meets the Contracting Authority's needs. As no other potential suppliers have been identified, we consider that the contract can be signed without a prior contest based on § 13-4 b) point 3 of the Public Procurement Regulations (PPR). "the tenderer has exclusive rights, including intellectual property rights" If the contracting authority receives no objections to the commencement of the contract, the contract will commence 10 days from the day after this notice is published.


Winner: Thermo Electron Sweden AB
Award value: 5700000