A bid of €323.5m ($418.5m) by Canariensis for Lot 3 in today’s Spanish duty free and travel retail auctions will – if unchallenged – allow World Duty Free Group to fully retain its dominant position in Spain.

 

La Sociedad de Distribución Comercial Aeroportuaria de Canarias (Canariensis), a subsidiary of WDFG Spain, in fact won the lot for the six Canary Islands airports that made up the final lot by default.

 

Rivals bidder Sigma SA did not, in the end, submit a financial bid; Dufry Canary Islands, S. L. was excluded due to “incomplete documentation submitted”; while Gebr. Heinemann SE & Co.KG, which was also excluded on the same grounds in Lot 1, withdrew its initial financial offer in this lot.

 

Spain’s state-owned airport operator Aeropuertos Españoles y Navegación Aérea (Aena), has hailed its nationwide DF&TR tender across 26 airports as both ‘competitive’ by breaking it up into three lots, and ‘transparent’, by having oversight from a notary, Pablo Taboada Ramallo from the Madrid Bar, and a team of external auditors BDO.

 

Yet during the course of today – with the details of the Lot 1 and Lot 2 bids emerging – it became increasingly evident that the incumbent effective monopoly DF&TR operator in Spain, WDFG Spain, part of Autogrill in Italy, was going to fight hard to keep its market supremacy.

 

It earlier outbid rival for Lots I and 2 comprising 20 airports, including Madrid-Barajas and Barcelona-El Prat in each tranche respectively and, by tonight, the company had swept up all three lots – subject to approval from the Aena board next Tuesday.

 

Aena say that by operating an auction in three tranches it has got the best price possible and points to the fact that its fees will increase from 27% today to 37% for Lots 1 and 2, and to a huge 41.7% for Lot 3, the last one to be bid on. All contracts run until 31 October 31, 2020.

 

Canariensis will be responsible for 13 outlets occupying 8,000sq m in the six airports in Lot 3 with the contract running from various start dates between 2013 and 2016 (depending on when current contracts mature) until 31 October 2020.