Britain's biggest nuclear site skips competition, hands SAP £33M to start ERP switch
(2026/04/10)
- Reference: 1775812508
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2026/04/10/sellafield_sap_erp/
- Source link:
The government-owned company that runs the UK's most important nuclear site has begun plans to replace its legacy SAP ERP – mainstream support for which ends in 2027 – via a £33 million award to the German vendor, without competition.
In [1]an official document published earlier this month, Sellafield Limited, which runs the site in West Cumbria, awarded the contract for SAP's "Core HR SaaS Licensing to include Recruitment Module" in the first step of what will become a much larger project.
Sellafield, formerly known as Windscale, has been the center of the UK's nuclear industry since the 1950s. While the site is home to a number of companies and the government's Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), Sellafield Limited is a British nuclear decommissioning Site Licence Company controlled by the NDA.
[2]
For financial management, planning, and HR, it relies on the ERP system, SAP BS7, which includes the ERP Central Component 6.0 (ECC). Mainstream support stops at the end of 2027, while extended support is available until the end of 2030 for a 2 percent premium. Customers signing up to a specific cloud migration package [3]can get support until 2033 .
[4]
[5]
Sellafield's £33 million award to SAP for the HR SaaS licensing is the first of four planned deals for its migration from the legacy ERP platform and onto SAP S/4HANA, the currently supported system.
In the tender document, Sellafield said it also planned to make a direct award to SAP for cloud ERP, HR app Success Factors, and enterprise asset management (EAM), although it said it would sign that agreement in July next year and is yet to disclose details.
[6]
As part of the ERP migration, Sellafield also intends to sign up a specialist implementation and support partner for its core HR service in April 2027 and another partner for S/4HANA and EAM services in July 2027. Competition for service partners will come under a framework agreement, the nuclear site management company said.
UK procurement law sets out conditions under which buyers might avoid opening up tenders for competition and make a direct award. Sellafield said its award to SAP meets these conditions because the German vendor's software underpins all its core enterprise processes and is "deeply integrated with critical operational and regulatory systems."
"Replacing it with a different ERP would require wholesale process redesign across finance, procurement, warehousing, and HR, as well as extensive data, integration, and control rebuilds creating significant technical constraints, challenges, and risks. This would create a transformation lasting over five years – far exceeding the proportional effort of an in‑family SAP upgrade and impossible to complete before existing support ends," it said.
[7]Britain's biggest nuclear site looks set to outlast SAP support again
[8]UK.gov's nuclear strategy is 'slow, inefficient, and costly'
[9]£127M wasted on failed UK nuclear cleanup plan
[10]Nuclear center must replace roof on 70-year-old lab so it can process radioactive waste
By adopting the SAP upgrade path, Sellafield would "retain and extend substantial investments already made," including its SAP HANA database infrastructure, which supports existing applications.
A direct award to SAP "avoids the cost of retiring working solutions, rebuilding the integration landscape, or procuring extensive retraining and consultancy support required for a different ERP platform," Sellafield added.
[11]
Legacy SAP systems can be fiendishly difficult to migrate away from because of the number of customizations that go into their implementations. Sellafield also seems to have hit this challenge.
"The existing SAP landscape has a significant number of integrations with other internal and external systems. Moving to an alternative ERP solution would require all interfaces being re-architected, re-engineered, and tested for compliance, which significantly increases the technical complexity and risk that the migration would fail," it said.
It added that "for a site of Sellafield's scale and regulatory complexity, moving away from SAP would create disproportionate technical difficulty, heightened operational risk, and major transition costs."
Other UK government departments have used the same approach. His Majesty's Revenue & Customs, which handles more than £800 billion in tax revenue and payments annually, [12]awarded SAP a £275 million ($370 million) contract without competition to move off ECC and onto S/4HANA.
Sellafield is also looking for a tech services company to support infrastructure and existing applications, including the legacy SAP system. [13]The deal is set to be worth around £90 million , with 118 applications under the arrangement. The tender notice is due to be published in May. ®
Get our [14]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.find-tender.service.gov.uk/Notice/030499-2026
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/databases&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2adjKQSVqx7PDV2c5AmvzcAAAABI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://theregister.com/2025/01/28/sap_extends_support_deadline/
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/databases&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44adjKQSVqx7PDV2c5AmvzcAAAABI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/databases&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33adjKQSVqx7PDV2c5AmvzcAAAABI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/databases&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44adjKQSVqx7PDV2c5AmvzcAAAABI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/13/sellafield_sap_support/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/12/ukgovs_nuclear_strategy_is_slow/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/07/mps_find_127_million_wasted_sellafield/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2025/03/28/uk_nuclear_center_waste_project_delayed/
[11] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/databases&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33adjKQSVqx7PDV2c5AmvzcAAAABI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/22/sap_275_million_award_from/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/13/sellafield_sap_support/
[14] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
In [1]an official document published earlier this month, Sellafield Limited, which runs the site in West Cumbria, awarded the contract for SAP's "Core HR SaaS Licensing to include Recruitment Module" in the first step of what will become a much larger project.
Sellafield, formerly known as Windscale, has been the center of the UK's nuclear industry since the 1950s. While the site is home to a number of companies and the government's Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), Sellafield Limited is a British nuclear decommissioning Site Licence Company controlled by the NDA.
[2]
For financial management, planning, and HR, it relies on the ERP system, SAP BS7, which includes the ERP Central Component 6.0 (ECC). Mainstream support stops at the end of 2027, while extended support is available until the end of 2030 for a 2 percent premium. Customers signing up to a specific cloud migration package [3]can get support until 2033 .
[4]
[5]
Sellafield's £33 million award to SAP for the HR SaaS licensing is the first of four planned deals for its migration from the legacy ERP platform and onto SAP S/4HANA, the currently supported system.
In the tender document, Sellafield said it also planned to make a direct award to SAP for cloud ERP, HR app Success Factors, and enterprise asset management (EAM), although it said it would sign that agreement in July next year and is yet to disclose details.
[6]
As part of the ERP migration, Sellafield also intends to sign up a specialist implementation and support partner for its core HR service in April 2027 and another partner for S/4HANA and EAM services in July 2027. Competition for service partners will come under a framework agreement, the nuclear site management company said.
UK procurement law sets out conditions under which buyers might avoid opening up tenders for competition and make a direct award. Sellafield said its award to SAP meets these conditions because the German vendor's software underpins all its core enterprise processes and is "deeply integrated with critical operational and regulatory systems."
"Replacing it with a different ERP would require wholesale process redesign across finance, procurement, warehousing, and HR, as well as extensive data, integration, and control rebuilds creating significant technical constraints, challenges, and risks. This would create a transformation lasting over five years – far exceeding the proportional effort of an in‑family SAP upgrade and impossible to complete before existing support ends," it said.
[7]Britain's biggest nuclear site looks set to outlast SAP support again
[8]UK.gov's nuclear strategy is 'slow, inefficient, and costly'
[9]£127M wasted on failed UK nuclear cleanup plan
[10]Nuclear center must replace roof on 70-year-old lab so it can process radioactive waste
By adopting the SAP upgrade path, Sellafield would "retain and extend substantial investments already made," including its SAP HANA database infrastructure, which supports existing applications.
A direct award to SAP "avoids the cost of retiring working solutions, rebuilding the integration landscape, or procuring extensive retraining and consultancy support required for a different ERP platform," Sellafield added.
[11]
Legacy SAP systems can be fiendishly difficult to migrate away from because of the number of customizations that go into their implementations. Sellafield also seems to have hit this challenge.
"The existing SAP landscape has a significant number of integrations with other internal and external systems. Moving to an alternative ERP solution would require all interfaces being re-architected, re-engineered, and tested for compliance, which significantly increases the technical complexity and risk that the migration would fail," it said.
It added that "for a site of Sellafield's scale and regulatory complexity, moving away from SAP would create disproportionate technical difficulty, heightened operational risk, and major transition costs."
Other UK government departments have used the same approach. His Majesty's Revenue & Customs, which handles more than £800 billion in tax revenue and payments annually, [12]awarded SAP a £275 million ($370 million) contract without competition to move off ECC and onto S/4HANA.
Sellafield is also looking for a tech services company to support infrastructure and existing applications, including the legacy SAP system. [13]The deal is set to be worth around £90 million , with 118 applications under the arrangement. The tender notice is due to be published in May. ®
Get our [14]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.find-tender.service.gov.uk/Notice/030499-2026
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/databases&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2adjKQSVqx7PDV2c5AmvzcAAAABI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://theregister.com/2025/01/28/sap_extends_support_deadline/
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/databases&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44adjKQSVqx7PDV2c5AmvzcAAAABI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/databases&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33adjKQSVqx7PDV2c5AmvzcAAAABI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/databases&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44adjKQSVqx7PDV2c5AmvzcAAAABI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/13/sellafield_sap_support/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/12/ukgovs_nuclear_strategy_is_slow/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/07/mps_find_127_million_wasted_sellafield/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2025/03/28/uk_nuclear_center_waste_project_delayed/
[11] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/databases&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33adjKQSVqx7PDV2c5AmvzcAAAABI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/22/sap_275_million_award_from/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/13/sellafield_sap_support/
[14] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Another unique ERP instance
I wonder how many ERPs are being run by central governments and their quangos? Let's not get into the horrific duplication and mess in the local government space.