Murcia’s Minister of Infrastructure and Development, Pedro Rivero, chose the massive freight facility at Corvera to formally launch the bidding process last week for the management of the much troubled and long overdue International Airport.
In addition to the main airport facility, Minister Rivero wanted to highlight that the successful bidder will also operate all of the areas and services related to the commercial, industrial and logistic sector, such as hotels, petrol stations and long-stay car parks
He said that “one of the great attractions of the airport tender is the Area of Complementary Activities, attached to the infrastructure, from where commercial, industrial, Logistics and service companies will operate in an area covering over 600,000 square metres“.
Indeed just 24 hours earlier he had been singing the praises of the new facility to over thirty entrepreneurs of the Association of Directors of the Region of Murcia (Adimur), with whom he had held a working meeting.
Whilst the area reserved for these complementary activities is built and fitted with public lighting, water and sanitation networks, electricity distribution and telephony and communications it is currently little more than a shell. Rivero explained that the successful bidder will be expected to expand the business potential of the airport by planning and adding these additional services which will represent an attractive additional income.
The cargo terminal is expected to become the gateway, both into and out of Murcia, for lots of other countries, including many within the Asian Continent, especially for products relating to the agri-food industry.
These facilities will meet the needs of the region’s exporting entrepreneurs, who will be able to benefit from the commercial and intermodal capacity of the new airport.
As such the logistics area will combine road and air transport in order to combine the interests of the tourism sector with the needs of the export sector, for which the airport will become one of the fundamental areas of development.
The airport itself is designed to accommodate traffic of 3 million passengers per year. It has a main runway of 3,000 meters in length and 45 meters in width, capable of receiving Boeing 747 and 737, and Airbus 340 and 320, which as well as domestic flights will enable it to operate international routes of medium range.
Details of the public tender document were published in the Official Bulletin of Murcia. The contract will be awarded for a period of 25 years which the Minister anticipated will earn in the region of 500 million euro during the period of the contract.
Interested bidders now have a period of 40 days in which to register their interest after which they will then have a further 2 months to present their documented bids. As such the management contract should be awarded to the successful bidder by the middle of the summer.
