According to information posted on the website of the Infrastructure Agency, the lowest bid, equalling the ceiling value of the investment, had been submitted by a local consortium headed by Pomgrad and including Kolektor Koling, SŽ-ŽGP, GH-Holding and Gorenjska Gradbena Družba.

The Turkish company Cengiz is bidding to build the section for EUR 117.4 million, and the Austrian builder Strabag placed a bid in the amount of EUR 136.6 million.

The Slovenian consortium involves companies that are already working on the Slovenian railway network. Meanwhile, Cengiz and Kolektor are both in bidding for a contract to build the second tube of the Karavanke motorway tunnel. Cgengiz's bid is the lowest of the five that arrived in a repeat call.

The Infrastructure Agency will now review the bids for the Maribor-Šentilj project with the selection of the bidder to be announced by October 2019 at the latest. The selected bidder would need to complete the constriction within two years after being introduced into the project.

The entire project to upgrade the 16-kilometre Maribor - Šentilj line is valued at EUR 253.7 million, with EUR 100 million to come from EU cohesion funds. The project is being conducted in several phases.

In June 2018, Slovenian companies Pomgrad, SŽ-ŽGP, GH Holding and Gorenjska Gradbena Družba signed a EUR 44.4 million contract to upgrade the section between Pesnica and Šentilj with the work slated to complete by August this year.

SŽ-ŽGP, Pomgrad, Kolektor Koling and GH Holding have also won a EUR 55.5 million contract to upgrade the railway stations Tezno and Maribor and the section between Maribor and Počehova. The deadline for the completion of the contract is 31 September 2020.

A EUR 10.1 million noise barrier on the Pesnica - Šentilj section will be built by 21 December 2021 by SŽ-ŽGP in Pomgrad, while AJM will put in place a EUR 428,000 passive noise barrier by 16 November this year.

Apart from the tender to build a new section of the railway, pubic contracting is also under way for construction of rail-road crossings on the Pesnica - Šentilj section. The agency said that a single bidder has submitted an offer for the latter project without naming it.

The single track Maribor - Šentilj line, running through two tunnels, was built in 1846 as a section on the railway connecting Vienna and Trieste. It was electrified in 1976.

Following the upgrade, trains will be able to travel at speeds of up to 120 km/h, up from the current top speed of 80 km/h. The number of trains the track can handle will increase from 63 to 84 a day, and cargo capacity from 6.3 to 9.9 million tonnes a year.

The upgrade, which is slated for completion by the end of 2021, will also adapt the line for a later expansion with a second track, which could be built by the end of 2026.