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GMR Airports Ltd has been selected to develop, operate and manage the new international Kastelli airport project in Heraklion, Crete island of Greece, in partnership with Greek infrastructure major Terna S.A..
GMR Airports will be the designated airport operator in the consortium for this project, the company said in a BSE filing on Wednesday.
The concession period for the greenfield project will be 35 years, including phase-1 construction of 5 years, the company added.
Earlier this year, GMR Airports and Terna had placed a bid of €480 million for the construction and operation of the new airport — much below the expected estimation of ₹850 million, Reuters had reported in April. The new Kastelli Airport will replace the existing Heraklion Airport, which handles over 6 million passengers annually and faces capacity constraint.
“The airport is in line with the asset-light strategy we have adopted for overseas expansion and will see GMR participate in project management and commercial management in addition to airport operations,” Srinivas Bommidala, Business Chairman, GMR Airports, said. The company did not comment on the cost of the project.
The Greece project will be GMR Group’s second in Europe after it had developed Istanbul’s Sabiha Gokcen airport.
GMR Infra is also developing Mactan Cebu International Airport (MCIA) in Philippines in partnership with Megawide Construction Corporation.
The new overseas project comes as a time when the debt-laden GMR group is in the process of restructuring its debt and divesting assets, mainly in the road and power sectors.
Financial performance GMR Infrastructure had recently announced reducing its consolidated debt to ₹19,856 crore in FY17 from ₹37,480 crore in the last fiscal, as a result of debt restructuring exercise and divestment campaign.
The company, however, reported a 39 per cent increase in standalone net loss for the quarter ended March 2017 to ₹2,478 crore from ₹1,787 crore in the same period of the last financial year. The company’s standalone total revenue declined to ₹272.4 crore from ₹395.2 crore in the previous fiscal.
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