Chile's Ministry of Public Works (MOP) has pre-qualified 10 teams/firms and is to qualify three other teams for the concession contract to expand and operate Santiago's international airport.

The 10 pre-qualified teams/firms are the following:

• Grupo Pudahuel, formed by Ferrovial Aeropuertos, Echeverría Izquierdo and Icafal Inversiones;
• A Port Chile, formed by Mariano Valle and Flughafen Zürich AG;
• Nuevo Pudahuel; formed by Aéroports de Paris and Vinci Airports;
• Grupo Costanera, formed by Atlantia and CPP Investment Board;
• Astaldi;
• Invepar;
• Sacyr;
• OHL ; and
• Agencias Universales (Agunsa)
• Aena Internacional

Three other teams are under approval: Grupo Odinsa, Cedicor (parent company of Corporacion America) and Aeropuertos de Cancún S.A.

According to local sourcers Vinci Airports is planning to implement the same management system as the one currently existing in the Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport.

Submission and opening of technical proposals are scheduled on November 18th. The concession is set to be awarded in Q3 2014. The preferred bidder will start operating the airport on 1 October 2015 when SCL will finish its concession contract. Once the concession is awarded, there will be a one-year period for engineering development, followed by four years of construction works.

The concession includes the development of a 200,00 m2 new international passenger terminal, the remodelling and expansion of the existing domestic passenger terminal, the construction of more than 4,000 new parking spaces in a multi-storey car park, and a number of landscaping projects.

The concession will require investment of US$655 million.

The project aims to triple Arturo Merino Benitez International Airport's capacity to 29 million per year by 2030 and to 50 million por year by 2045. The current airport infrastructure has a capacity of just 9 million passengers.

According to the MOP, the airport handled most that 15 million passengers in 2013, despite only having capacity for 9 million. Santiago accounts for nearly 70% of Chile's airport passenger traffic.