The FreightLink board, chaired by Malcolm Kinnaird, is examining its options following an exhaustive sale process by investment banker, UBS.

Bidders are speculated to be a Transfield Services/Macquarie Group partnership, current shareholder Gennessee & Wyomingand a US infrastructure fund.

FreightLink’s shareholders are Kellogg Brown & Root, Carillion, John Holland, Genesee & Wyoming Australia, Macmahon Holdings and a number of others including the Northern and Central Aboriginal Land Councils.

Freightlink managing director John Fullerton said this week that the confidential sales process was still being worked through and when a decision had been made it would be announced.

It is understood that of the three bids on the table, all are short of the $476 million in senior debt and mezzanine financing now in place.

One option remaining is for the directors to place the company into receivership in a last-ditch sales process.

This is the second sales process for the company.

Timing of the sale isn’t great with infrastructure assets way off the full prices being paid ahead of the sub-prime crisis.

Falls in the valuations of major players in the infrastructure business are making the process of selling major assets a tough call. The only other big rail asset on the market is Babcock & Brown Infrastructure’s sale of a stake in Westnet.

B&B Infrastructure, Asciano and Queensland Rail, all initially mooted to be interested in FreightLink, now have capital issues of their own.

Construction of the 1420km rail link between Alice Springs and Darwin, which began in April 2001 with the first track laid in April 2002, was completed under budget and ahead of schedule.

Four construction companies – Kellogg Brown & Root, Barclay Mowlem Holdings, John Holland Group and Macmahon Holdings – constructed the line in joint venture which, from the start of the earthworks, took 31 months to complete.

Fullerton said the recent signing of a 10-year contract to haul copper concentrates from Prominent Hill to Darwin for OZ Minerals had been a coup.

Another recent contract was to take magnetite and copper ore for IMX Resources from early next year.

FreightLink already carries iron ore for Territory Resources from Francis Creek, 200km from Darwin, and magnetite for OM Holdings from Tennant Creek to Darwin, some 800km.