Abu Dhabi Airports awards duty free contracts for Midfield Terminal building

Abu Dhabi Airports has awarded contracts to Aer Rianta International and Lagardère Capital to provide duty free concessions in its upcoming Dhs 10.8bn Midfield Terminal Building.

The Aer Rianta International group, which operates in airports across Europe, New Zealand, North America and the Middle East, will design and operate duty free space dedicated to perfumes, cosmetics, skincare, sunglasses and jewellery.

Lagardère will oversee the tobacco, confectionery and fine foods categories in partnership with Abu Dhabi Capital Group.

The new terminal, currently under construction at Abu Dhabi International Airport, will increase the overall capacity of the airport to more than 45 million passengers per year.

It will feature a total of 28,000 square metres of duty free space, comprising of 18,000 sqm retail and 10,000 sqm for food and beverage outlets.

The tender process for the section started in February last year, Abu Dhabi Airports said in a statement. Retail operators were asked to submit concepts that would ‘capture the essence of Arabian hospitality’ along with retail execution to cater to the 30 million passengers who are expected to use the MTB when it opens.

Chairman of Abu Dhabi Airports Ali Majed Al Mansoori said: “We received several very strong bids for these contracts, but Aer Rianta International and Lagardère Capital came up with ideas that will set new benchmarks in airport retail. We selected these two companies as their technologically-advanced, unique concepts were perfectly aligned with our ambitions.”

The new terminal is anticipated to be 70 per cent complete by the end of 2015. Earlier this week, Abu Dhabi Airports confirmed that it has broken ground on the construction site of MTB’s 12,000 sqm fire station.

Overall construction is being carried out by a joint venture of TAV, CCC, and Arabtec and the 700,000 sqm terminal is expected to be fully ready in July 2017.