A CONSORTIUM in which Aer Rianta has a substantial stake has been chosen for the final short-list of two to buy a 50 per cent stake in Dusseldorf airport, the second biggest airport in Germany.
Aer Rianta's partner in the bid is the German construction giant Hochtief, while the rival bidder includes the American airports group AGI and the German company Harpen.
Dusseldorf Airport is owned by the German state of North Rhine Westphalia and a final decision on who will buy the 50 per cent stake will be made in September.
A spokesman for Aer Rianta confirmed that the Irish airports authority had a 40 per cent interest in the consortium. He declined to give any details of the financing involved but it is understood that the amount of cash that Aer Rianta would have to put up if the bid was successful is small.
Hochtief, which has built airports in Jeddah, Athens and Warsaw, would provide most of the cash and Aer Rianta the airport management expertise, broadly on the lines of the Aer Rianta investment in Birmingham Airport in Britain.
Few details are available on how much the stake in the Dusseldorf airport will cost, but, if the Aer Rianta joint venture bid is successful, it will probably represent one of the biggest ever undertakings by Aer Rianta International.
Dusseldorf is the second biggest airport in Germany, with an annual throughput of 15 million passengers, substantially more than the 12 million passengers that pass through Aer Rianta's three Irish airports at Dublin, Shannon and Cork.
The Aer Rianta spokesman said that Dusseldorf has a huge passenger catchment area in the Rhine/ Ruhr area and has regular services to most European capital cities, including Dublin through Aer Lingus.
An Aer Rianta/Natwest Ventures consortium paid an estimated Pounds 45 million for a 40 per cent stake in Birmingham Airport which had a throughput of just 5.4 million passengers.
Aer Rianta is thought to have provided no more than Pounds 3 million for this investment, with Natwest Ventures content to put in most of the money and allow Aer Rianta to manage the airport.
Aer Rianta will be fervently hoping that this latest airport investment project is successful, after another consortium in which it was involved failed in a bid to buy Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth airports in Australia. Aer Rianta has also indicated an interest in bidding for some of the airports being privatised by the Argentine government.
Aer Rianta's move to develop its airport management outside Ireland is aimed at partly compensating for the loss of duty-free business within the EU from 1999.
Aer Rianta International which operates the airport management and international duty-free businesses has higher managed sales than Aer Rianta has in its Irish operations, and this is set to rise dramatically as a result of the recent contract to run 12 duty-free shops at the new Hong Kong Airport.
The Hong Kong contract will boost ARI's managed sales to over Pounds 400 million while a successful bid for the half-share in Dusseldorf would boost these managed sales even further. ____
