Chile's Ministry of Public Works (MOP) has awarded the concession contract to expand and operate Santiago's international airport to the Grupo Nuevo Pudahuel consortium, comprising Vinci Aeroports S.A.S., Aeroports de Paris S.A. and Astaldi.

The team, which proposed that a total of 77.56% of concession revenues will be for the government, beat out competition from four other shortlisted consortia. The other teams and their proposals were the following:

• Grupo Pudahuel: Ferrovial Aeropuertos Chile, Echeverría Izquierdo, Icafal Inversiones y Ferrovial S.A. - 65.02% of concession revenues.
• Grupo Consorcio Aeroportuario AMB: Agunsa S.A., which is the current operator of the airport, and Concesiones Viarias Chile Tres S.A. (subsidiary of ACS) - 51,8% of concession revenues. This consortium did not pass the technical phase.
• Grupo Aeropuerto Santiago: Atlantia and Grupo Costanera - 67.53% of concession revenues.
• Consorcio AMB: OHL Concesiones Chile S.A., Grupo Odinsa S.A. and Flughafen Zurich AG. - 67.91% of concession revenues.

Grupo Nuevo Pudahuel consortium will start operating the airport on 1 October 2015 when the current concession contract will finish. With the concession awarded, there is a one-year period for engineering development, followed by four years of construction works. The concession contract will have a period of 20 years.

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 total project investment is estimated at UF14.8 million (US$579.4 million).

According to the MOP, the airport handled most that 15 million passengers in 2013, despite only having capacity for 9 million. The project aims to increase the airport capacity to 30 million per year by 2030 and to 50 million per year by 2045.

Santiago accounts for nearly 70% of Chile's airport passenger traffic.

During the last month we have reported about several airport PPP projects globally:

• Navi Mumbai International Airport PPP (India)
• Fukuoka airport concession (Japan)
• Barranquilla International Airport concession (Colombia)
• Kansai international airport concession (Japan)
• Uberaba International Airport PPP project (Brazil)
• Concession of Armenia, Popoayán and Neiva airports (Colombia)