The Abu Dhabi Airports Company (Adac) is set to issue three tenders seeking suppliers for its Midfield Terminal Project a day after Sheikh Hazza bin Zayed paid a visit to the site and said it will open in 2019.
The airport operator has advertised tenders for a company to run its staff canteen, to supply and install office furniture and to provide trolley-management services at the new terminal. Companies interested in bidding need to register with Adac’s tender portal and submit expressions of interest by noon on Thursday, after which tender documents will be distributed to the interested parties.
Sheikh Hazza, who is deputy chairman of the Abu Dhabi Executive Council, said on Sunday that the airport will be able to accommodate up to 30 million passengers a year when the Midfield Terminal opens its doors in 2019.
“Abu Dhabi International Airport will be the jewel in the crown of the infrastructure projects in the emirate, and it will constitute a paradigm shift in international standards to cope with the development the UAE capital Abu Dhabi is currently witnessing,” he said.
The Midfield Terminal will house 65 aircraft gates and cover an area of about 742,000 square metres, which will include 3,500 sq metres of duty free shopping. It is being built by a partnership between Arabtec, the Consolidated Contractors Company of Greece and Turkey’s airports specialist, TAV Group. The contract was awarded in 2012 and was initially due for completion by July 17 this year.
The new terminal is one of a number of significant airport expansion projects either being built or in the pipeline across the GCC. According to a report published by business information company Meed in November, more than US$100 billion worth of airport projects are expected to be completed between now and 2020, including the Midfield Terminal complex, King Abdulaziz International in Saudi Arabia, the expansion of Muscat International Airport and a new passenger terminal at Bahrain International Airport, the latter of which is also being built by an Arabtec-TAV partnership and is funded by the Abu Dhabi Fund for Development.
Other projects in the pipeline include the next phase of Al Maktoum International Airport in Dubai.
However, there are signs that this growth in capacity – regional carriers currently have about 1,300 planes worth an estimated $345bn on order, according to Meed – is eating into profit margins at global and regional levels.
In January, ratings agency Moody’s reported that operating margins are declining as capacity growth is outstripping demand. Although the Middle East will enjoy the highest rate of revenue passenger kilometre (a measurement of demand) growth of 9 per cent this year, this represents a decline of 1.8 per cent on last year.
Jonathan Root, a senior credit officer at Moody’s, said “the financial impact of weak oil prices is the main cause of slower growth” in the region.
mfahy@thenational.ae
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