The joint venture that won the contract in 2014 to build a new regional airport at Jizan in the southern region of Saudi Arabia expects to receive the new land allocated for the project in early April.

The new location is not far from the previous site, according to sources familiar with the project, who indicated that the site preparation is expected to commence within two weeks.

A joint venture comprising Safari Company, Nassir Hazza and Saudi Lebanese Modern Construction, won the $685m contract for the construction of King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz regional airport in Jizan in 2014.

Construction work on the project stopped in December 2015 based on the request made by Saudi Aramco, which suggested that the location where the new airport was being built may present an opportunity for oil and gas exploration activity.

The new airport will feature a terminal building that could handle up to 2.4 million passengers annually, along with a modern cargo complex and air traffic control tower, among other facilities.

Jizan, which is located in the southern region of Saudi Arabia and close to the borders with Yemen, has an existing regional airport. The construction of a new airport is part of Gaca’s multibillion-dollar airport modernisation plan, which according to Sulaiman Al-Hamdan, president of Saudi Arabia’s General Authority of Civil Aviation (Gaca) is on track to be completed by 2020, around the same year the kingdom aims to privatise all of its airports.