Abu Dhabi Airports Company (Adac), operator of Abu Dhabi’s five airports, has invited firms to bid for the operational readiness and airport transfer (Orat) contract of the Midfield Terminal Building at Abu Dhabi International airport.

The terminal is expected to enter operations next year, two years later than planned.

Abu Dhabi International processed 24.48 million passengers in 2016, exceeding the existing airport’s capacity of 17.5 million passengers a year. However, passenger traffic growth at the airport significantly slowed down during that year, down from 23 per cent in 2015 to 5.1 per cent in 2016.

ADAC has not so far published passenger traffic data for 2017.

The Midfield Terminal Complex is currently being built between the two runways of Abu Dhabi International. It is designed to handle up to 30 million passengers a year.

It will feature 27 kilometres of baggage-handling conveyors with a capacity to process 19,000 bags an hour. It aims to offer 45-minute connection times including baggage transfers. The terminal is also expected to feature more than 4,300 closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras.

It was jointly designed by the US-based Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates (KPF), UK firm Ove Arup, the Netherlands’ Naco and India-based BNP Associates.

A joint venture of Turkey’s TAV Construction and Athens-based Consolidated Contractors Company (CCC) won the main civils contract worth AED10.5bn ($2.9bn) in June 2012.