Chile's Ministry of Public Works (MOP) has has finally received bids from five teams for the concession contract to expand and operate Santiago's international airport.

MOP received the bids during the last week of the year. Technical bids were opened during the submission ceremony and economic bids will be opened on February 4th.

• Grupo Pudahuel: Ferrovial Aeropuertos Chile, Echeverría Izquierdo, Icafal Inversiones y Ferrovial S.A.

• Grupo Consorcio Aeroportuario AMB: Agunsa S.A. and Concesiones Viarias Chile Tres S.A. (subsidiary of ACS). Agunsa is the current operator of the airport

• Grupo Aeropuerto Santiago: Atlantia and Grupo Costanera.

• Consorcio AMB: OHL Concesiones Chile S.A., Grupo Odinsa S.A. and Flughafen Zurich AG.

• Grupo Nuevo Pudahuel: Vinci Aeroports S.A.S., Aeroports de Paris S.A. and Astaldi.

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.