Iran’s Imam Khomeini International Airport City Company is seeking interest from international firms by 18 April for the contract to develop a new passenger terminal at the Imam Khomeini International airport.

The Iran Shahr Terminal is to be developed using a combined engineering, procurement and construction plus finance (EPC+F) model.

It has a planned capacity of up to 25 million passengers annually and an estimated budget of €2bn ($2.46bn).

Interested contractors are expected to cover at least 85 per cent of the project’s construction cost.

The contract for the project was tendered and cancelled last year. The previous request for proposals (RFP) specified that the project will be procured using a build, lease, transfer (BLT) model.

A source with knowledge of the project expects the new tender to be issued before the end of 2018.

The main passenger  terminal at the airport, 45 kilometres south of Tehran’s city centre, handled more than 8 million passengers in 2017, 11.5 per cent higher than in 2016. It is known to be the only profit-making airport in Iran.

A new, smaller terminal in the airport, Salam Terminal, is under construction and is expected to be completed by mid-2018. The terminal, which has a design capacity of 4 million passengers a year, was originally planned for pilgrimage traffic, but will now be used for international traffic until the Iran Shahr Terminal is completed.