Japan s Hokkaido Airports to recategorise as an SME as survival supplants growth centreforaviation.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from centreforaviation.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
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The process of privatising Japan’s airports was slow to get going but has gained momentum since the first transactions in 2016. It is a huge process with, in theory at least, around 100 airports potentially to be part of the process and about 10 deals competed so far.
The one for the seven Hokkaido airports, which was finalised, on time, in Mar-2021 with the handover of the final five of them, is the most significant of all, because it involves multiple assets and facilities of different sizes. Now the consortium can get on with the job that it has pledged to do, and which includes increasing passenger numbers almost tenfold and spending billions of dollars.
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2020 was a year in which the development of many (although not all) airports came to a sudden stop, with capex being replaced in the pecking order by opex in most cases – and in many, simply by survival measures.
Along with that everlasting hiatus came a cull of airport investment and privatisation activities, again with a few notable exceptions, mainly in countries where multiple concession procedures were already well advanced.
Over two parts this report details the few deals which were done in 2020, some that were abandoned or suspended, and those airports which have emerged – or may emerge – as future investment opportunities, assuming that the much-desired ‘post COVID recovery period’ actually takes place this year.