Saudi Arabia’s General Authority for Civil Aviation (Gaca) has selected the joint venture of Turkey’s TAV and the local Al-Arrab Contracting Company for the estimated SR1.5bn ($400m) contract to build the new Terminal 5 building at King Khalid International airport in Riyadh.

Terminal 5 is part of Gaca’s significant expansion programme for King Khalid International, which will increase the airport’s annual capacity to about 24 million passengers from the current 14 million.

Gaca received bids from contractors for the package in November last year. MEED reported at the time that the TAV/Al-Arrab joint venture was the low bidder.

At the start of this year, four groups were shortlisted for the deal. The other shortlisted firms were the local Al-Bawani with France’s Vinci Construction, the local Al-Mabani General Contracting Company with Athens-based Consolidated Contractors Company (CCC) and the UAE’s Drake & Scull International, and Cyprus-based Joannou & Paraskevaides.

In July last year, the local Al-Mabani General Contractors was awarded an estimated SR219.5m ($58.5m) contract to build a new apron at the Riyadh airport. The work will involve the construction of an apron at Terminal 3 and the currently unused Terminal 4.

King Khalid International airport is located about 35 kilometres north of the capital.

The contract will be the latest major airport construction deal secured by TAV in the region during the past two years. Last year, it led joint ventures that won contracts to build the Midfield Terminal Building at Abu Dhabi International airport together with the contract to build a major maintenance hangar at Jeddah airport. Before that in late 2011, it won the contract to develop the new Medina Airport as a public-private partnership (PPP) deal.