Central purchasing bodies exist to turn many small procurements into a few large ones, and the argument for them is sound: better prices, less duplicated effort, one competent team instead of hundreds of amateur ones. The consequence is rarely discussed with the same enthusiasm. When one organisation buys on behalf of a whole state, the shape of a national market stops being an aggregate of many decisions and becomes a small number of very large ones, taken in one place, on a schedule that suits the buyer.
KEY NUMBERS
Since the first of June, Consip has published fifty-eight euro-denominated notices carrying a combined advertised value of about €6.89B. To put that in proportion, it is several times what most European national records show in the same period across every buyer they have. The concentration inside that figure is sharper still: the six largest notices are all electricity, structured as maximum global quantities in gigawatt-hours — 2,025 GWh at €496.1M, then 1,575, 1,485, 1,410, 1,395 and 1,380 GWh at values between €338M and €386M. Together those six lots account for roughly a third of everything the organisation has advertised in the period.
Ranked side by side the six tranches barely differ — a spread of under fifty per cent between the largest and the smallest, which is what makes them one exercise rather than six openings.
| Lot | Volume | Advertised value | Closes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Electricity 1 | 2,025 GWh | €496.1M | 31 Jul |
| Electricity 2 | 1,575 GWh | €385.9M | 31 Jul |
| Electricity 3 | 1,485 GWh | €367.5M | 31 Jul |
| Electricity 4 | 1,410 GWh | €349.0M | 31 Jul |
| Electricity 5 | 1,395 GWh | €345.2M | 31 Jul |
| Electricity 6 | 1,380 GWh | €338.1M | 31 Jul |
| Managed security services | — | €391.7M | 28 Jul |
The lots are not six separate opportunities. They are one procurement exercise divided by volume, and they share a submission deadline of 31 July, which tells a supplier most of what it needs to know about who the structure is for. An energy retailer able to price and guarantee supply across several tranches can bid on all of them; one that can serve a single tranche competes for a fraction of the exercise while carrying the same bid cost. Lot structures are usually described as a way of opening procurement to smaller suppliers, and often they are. Volume-based lots of this size do the opposite without anyone having to say so.
The rest of the portfolio shows the same logic at a smaller scale — managed security services at €391.7M, and a long tail of framework arrangements in categories that most administrations buy individually. What Italy has built is a market where a supplier’s entire relationship with the state can run through one counterparty and one calendar. That is efficient in the way a single large door is efficient, and it has the same drawback: everything depends on being on the right side of it when it opens.
Six lots, one deadline, one third of everything a national buyer advertised in six weeks.
WHY IT MATTERS
Centralisation moves the competitive question upstream: it is decided in the design of the lots rather than in the evaluation of the bids. Six tranches sized in gigawatt-hours describe the supplier that can win them long before any offer is opened, and the deadline they share removes the option of preparing for one after losing another. Whether that is the right trade for the prices it secures is a legitimate argument — but it is an argument about market structure, not about procurement administration, and it is settled in documents almost nobody reads.
Data: Otnox — live procurement intelligence across 56 markets. Basis: euro-denominated notices published by Consip, 2026-06-01..2026-07-26. Reproducible in the Otnox platform.
