At least three groups are preparing to submit offers for the contract to operate and maintain Jeddah’s King Abdulaziz International airport (KAIA), Saudi Arabia’s largest airport in terms of passenger traffic and the main gateway for hajj and umrah pilgrims.

Companies or consortiums understood to have been prequalified to bid for the operations and maintenance (O&M) deal include:

• Aeroports de Paris Management (France) / Saudi Binladin Group
• Malaysia Airport Holding Berhad (Malaysia)
• Changi Airports International (Singapore)

The deadline to submit offers is 8 June.

It has not been confirmed if Germany’s Fraport, the former O&M contract holder, will be submitting an offer.

Fraport and Changi Airports International both previously signed O&M contracts with Saudi Arabia’s General Authority of Civil Aviation (Gaca) in 2008. Fraport was awarded a $111.3m deal to manage KAIA and Riyadh’s King Khaled International airport (KKIA), while Changi Airports International won a $42.5m contract to manage King Fahd International airport (KFIA) in Dammam.

The deals expired in 2014, although Gaca extended its contract with Changi Airports International for seven months.

At the time, both firms were tasked to improve the management of the airports, focusing on sustainable traffic growth and introducing commercial opportunities to establish the airports as independent companies in preparation for a planned stock market listing.

KAIA handled 30.1 million passengers in 2015, a 7.4 per cent rise compared with the previous year.

The masterplan for KAIA envisages increasing the airport’s capacity to up to 43 million passengers a year by 2025 and 80 million passengers annually by 2035.

In late 2015, Gaca announced plans to privatise all the kingdom’s international and domestic airports by 2020, starting with KKIA during the current year, followed by KAIA by the second quarter of 2017, and Dammam’s KFIA the following quarter.

A full concession to operate Terminal 5 at KKIA was recently awarded to Ireland’s Dublin Airport Authority.

The country’s fourth international airport is already fully privatised. Developed under a 25-year, build-transfer-operate (BTO) model, Medina’s Prince Mohammed bin Abdulaziz International airport (PMIA) entered full operations in June 2015.