Dufry has entered an agreement with a local travel retail specialist, Global Retail Services Ltd, whose subsidiary provides retail services to 16 duty paid shops at Beijing Capital International Airport Terminal 3. Global Retail Services

Ltd has retail space of 1,440sq m.

Julian Diaz, CEO of Dufry, commented: ?We are very pleased to enter mainland China through this partnership. The travel retail market in China offers very interesting opportunities due to its size – the top five airports alone have a combined volume of almost 150 million passengers. We will work together with our partners to strengthen our presence going forward.

‘The development of our concession portfolio and our retail space has provided a strong basis for growth and the more than 25,000sq m which we have expanded or refurbished in 2008 reflect the continuation of this strategy.?

Beijing Capital International Airport handles more than 53m passengers a year, of which more than half travel through Terminal 3.

Meanwhile, as indicated earlier in 2008, Dufry completed and opened several expansion projects in November and December, namely in Belgrade, Brazil and Mexico and some shops in the Czech Republic.

During 2008, Dufry and Hudson continued to develop their retail space and overall, a total of 13,900sq m was added – or is currently being built or added – through expansions and new concessions. Furthermore, Dufry refurbished 11,160sq m of retail space in 2008. Including Hudson, Dufry operates retail space in excess of 135,000sq m of retail space worldwide, as per the end of 2008.