Saudi Arabia’s General Authority of Civil Aviation (Gaca) has invited prequalified firms to submit bids by 15 December to develop the $1.5bn first phase of Medina airport.

In June, Gaca prequalified eight consortiums to bid for the contract to develop the first phase (MEED 1:6:10).

The prequalifiers are:

• Airports Company of South Africa.
• Turkey’s YDA, Spain’s Aena Desarrollo Internacional, Spain’s OHL Concesiones.
• The Badr consortium comprised of Integrated Transportation Company, South Korea’s Incheon International Airport Corporation, Central Japan International Airport, South Korea’s Samsung.
• Local Saudi Binladin Group, France’s Aeroports de Paris Management, France’s Bouygues Batiment International.
• The Saudi airplex consortium made up of the local El-Seif Engineering Contracting Company, Ontario-based Marshall Macklin Monaghan Group (MMM), US-based Airport Development Corporation & Houston Airport System, and Dubai-based Emirates NBD.
• Turkey’s Limak Investment, India’a GMR Infrastructure, Turkey’s Mapa Construction.
• The Tibah consortium comprised of Turkey’s TAV Airports Holding, local Saudi Oger, local Al-Rajhi Holding Group, Athens-based Consolidated Contracting Company.
• The Saudi-Malaysian consortium comprised of local Bakri International Energy Company, Malaysia Airports Holdings Berhad, local Almabani General Contractors with Italy’s Impregilo SPA and Saudi-Malaysian Riyad Bank.

The first phase of the airport involves developing airside and landside facilities at the airport under a long-term concession.

The authority is planning to upgrade and expand the airport to increase its passenger handling capacity to 14 million people a year. The airport currently handles about 3.5 million passengers a year.

Later expansion plans involve the construction of a new passenger terminal, the renovation of the existing runway, the possible construction of a second runway and will be split across two phases. The project could cost a total of SR9bn ($2.4bn) to develop.

The International Finance Corporation (IFC), part of the Washington-based World Bank, is acting as the lead adviser to Gaca on the airport expansion project. It will be the first airport project to be developed on a public-private partnership (PPP) basis and several banks confirm they are already in talks with potential bidders about providing funding for the scheme. However, there are no details about how much funding each bidder will be required to provide.