DAA wins two Middle East airport shop contracts

State airport company DAA’s retail arm, ARI, has won two contracts in the Middle East and is eyeing a stake in an Indonesian business.

ARI owns and manages duty free and airport shops in Ireland and nine countries ranging from north America to New Zealand.

The company has won a contract to run new stores at King Khaled International Airport in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia and successfully bidded to keep its operation in Raffic Harri Airport in Beirut. It will manage shops in both locations with a local partner.

In Indonesia, its local partner, Aura Kantick, has secured a deal to manage stores in Jakarta airport’s new terminal three. ARI is understood to be in talks to join it in that business.

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Riyadh’s terminal five handles about 12 million passengers a year. It serves domestic destinations in Saudi Arabia, so the stores are duty-paid.

Beirut caters for 7.5 million passengers and the Irish company has 3,280sq m of duty free shops plus space sublet to others.

Terminal three in Jakarta’s Soekarno-Hatta International Airport will handle up to 25 million passengers. The shopping area has seven units and covers 1,500sq m.

ARI will also manage 4,760sq m of shops in the new terminal in Oman’s Muscat International Airport, which will open later this year. It won that contract in 2016.

DAA International, a division of the State company that offers consultancy and management services, runs Riyadh's terminal five. DAA chief executive, Kevin Toland, argues the case for Dublin Airport's new runway in an interview with The Irish Times today. He points out that the estimated cost, €320 million, is a fraction of the bill faced by most European airports for similar developments, as unlike them, it does not need to buy the site.

“We can do it for a lot less,” Toland says. “It’s all on our own land, we do not have to buy the land.”

Meanwhile, Cork Airport, part of the DAA group, reported that passenger figures grew 6 per cent last month, despite a lower number of flights through there.