Aena wins one of Brazil’s latest airport crown jewels

As part of a new round of public auctions held this Thursday in Brazil, Aena was awarded one of the crown jewels, the Congonhas airport in Sao Paulo, the second busiest airport in the country, in addition to 10 other airports located in four states.

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The Spanish company won with a bid of 2,450 million reais (~478 million euros), which, added to the commitments indicated in the bidding documents, brings the total amount of the operation to 4,089 million reais. Investments of R$5 billion are foreseen over the 30-year concession contract (73% of them until 2028), which is scheduled to be signed in February 2023. The contract can be extended for an additional five years, bringing the operating potential to 2058.

«The management of these 11 airports entails the obligation to pay a variable consideration with a four-year grace period, which consists of a percentage of gross revenues, increasing from 3.23% to 16.15% per year,» explained Aena.

In addition to Congonhas, which mobilized 22.8 million passengers in 2019, the other airports awarded to Aena are those of Campo Grande (1.5 million), Corumbá (30 thousand) and Ponta Porá (without regular passengers) in Mato Grosso do Sul; Uberlândia (1.15 million), Montes Claros (230 thousand) and Uberaba (80 thousand) in Minas Gerais; and Santarém (480 thousand), Marabá (270 thousand), Parauapebas (140 thousand) and Altamira (100 thousand) in Pará.

«The company’s priority is always to generate value for its shareholders, public and private, and for the workers» and that, «despite the hard times we have gone through because of COVID-19, we are convinced that the internationalization of Aena is a guarantee of the company’s future,» commented Maurici Lucena, president and CEO of Aena.

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The executive highlighted that domestic traffic in Brazil has already recovered by 100%, which is why he described the potential of the South American giant as indisputable.

These eleven airports join the six that Aena already operates under the Aena Brasil brand as of 2019: Recife, Maceió, João Pessoa, Aracaju, Campina Grande and Juazeiro do Norte.

Brazil entered the airport privatization wave that swept the region in the 1990s relatively late. The first airport to be concessioned was Natal in 2011, while in 2012 it was the turn of Brasilia, São Paulo/Guarulhos and Viracopos, and in 2013 the airports of Rio de Janeiro/Galeão and Belo Horizonte/Confins.

In 2017 Infraero divested itself of the airports of Fortaleza, Salvador, Florianópolis and Porto Alegre, while in 2019, in addition to those already mentioned, the airports of cities such as Vitória, Cuiabá and Rondonópolis were concessioned to Aena. The last round of auctions had been in 2021, when 21 airports were awarded, including those of Foz do Iguaçu, Goiânia and Manaus.

Since then, investments of more than USD 4 billion have been made by industry giants such as Fraport, Changi Airport, Zurich Airport, VINCI Airports, Aena and Corporación América Airports.