Malaysia Airports Holdings Berhad (MAHB) has revealed it is to take ‘a little more time’ before announcing the winner of its arrivals duty free tender at Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) which was issued in August.

Speaking to TRBusiness as part of an extensive video at the recent TFWA Asia-Pacific Exhibition and Conference, Mohammad Nazli Abdul Aziz, Malaysia Airports Senior General Manager for Commercial Services said: “In Kuala Lumpur, we have started with a series of tenders and are now on our third wave.

“One of the big tenders which occurred during this period was arrivals duty free. We have received very good submissions and the verdict is still under consideration. This is because we take arrivals duty free very seriously as not many countries allow it.

STRONG INTEREST

“This business has always been good for us and with the commercial re-set in place, we are receiving a lot of interest from big players around the world.”

He added: “We want to do this right and are taking a little more time in measuring and deciding on who will be the best consortium or company to come and present this for us.

“It is very important as most of our business comes from Malaysians themselves, so we want to do this right.”

Offering an update on the planned departures duty free tender at KLIA, Nazli said: “The departures tender will be delayed a little. At the moment, KLIA has a capacity issue. The airport is designed to handle 25m passengers per year, but we are consistently accommodating 29m. Last year, the figure actually reached 30m.

“We are looking into undertaking a study geared towards the future visioning of KLIA. This could result in an expansion of the airport or an additional satellite building.”

In terms of a potential timeline for the departures duty free tender, he commented: “We are in-between studies, but have just obtained approval from the board on the way forward. I think the market can expect announcements on the departures tender in the second half of the year.”

Click below to see the video.