Saudi Arabia's General Authority of Civil Aviation has invited pre qualified firms to submit bids by December 15 to develop the USD 1.5 billion Phase I of Medina airport.

In June, GACA pre qualified 8 consortiums to bid for the contract to develop the Phase I.

The pre qualifiers are
1. Airports Company of South Africa;
2. Turkey's YDA, Spain's Aena Desarrollo Internacional, Spain's OHL Concesiones
3. The Badr consortium comprised of Integrated Transportation Company, South Korea's Incheon International Airport Corporation, Central Japan International Airport, South Korea's Samsung
4. Local Saudi Binladin Group, France's Aeroports de Paris Management, France's Bouygues Batiment International
5. The Saudi airplex consortium made up of the local El Seif Engineering Contracting Company, Ontario based Marshall Macklin Monaghan Group, US based Airport Development Corporation & Houston Airport System and Dubai based Emirates NBD
6. Turkey's Limak Investment, India'a GMR Infrastructure, Turkey's Mapa Construction
7. The Tibah consortium comprised of Turkey's TAV Airports Holding, local Saudi Oger, local Al Rajhi Holding Group, Athens based Consolidated Contracting Company
8. The Saudi-Malaysian consortium comprised of local Bakri International Energy Company, Malaysia Airports Holdings Berhad, local Almabani General Contractors with Italy's Impregilo SPA and Saudi Malaysian Riyad Bank.

The Phase I of the airport involves developing airside and landside facilities at the airport under a long-term concession.

The authority is planning to upgrade and expand the airport to increase its passenger handling capacity to 14 million people a year. The airport currently handles about 3.5 million passengers a year. Later expansion plans involve the construction of a new passenger terminal, the renovation of the existing runway, the possible construction of a second runway and will be split across 2 phases. The project could cost a total of SAR 9 billion to develop.

(Sourced from MEED)