GMR Airports Limited, a subsidiary of GMR Infrastructure Limited, and its Greek partner TERNA Group on Friday signed the Concession Agreement for design and construction of a new international airport at Heraklion in Crete, Greece.
The concession period for the project is 35 years, including the phase-1 construction of five years. Crete is the largest and most visited island in Greece and Heraklion airport is the second largest in the country with a registered traffic growth of 10% annually over the past three years.
But it is facing a severe capacity constraint and would be replaced by the new airport, a press release said here on Friday.
The consortium intends to invest over €500 million for the development of the new airport and the entire project would be funded through a mix of equity and accruals from the existing airport and financial grant being provided by the Government of Greece.
“This is GMR Group’s first foray into the EU region and we eagerly look forward to expanding our footprint. New Heraklion airport is a landmark PPP project for Greece and it’s a matter of great pride for us to work on this,” said GMR’s business chairman (energy and international airports) Srinivas Bommidala.
GMR Group’s airport portfolio has around 159 million passenger capacity in operation and under development, including the country’s busiest Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi, RGIA, and Mactan Cebu International Airport in partnership with Megawide in the Philippines.
