Dufry has confirmed to TRBusiness that Sri Lanka’s cabinet has approved Bandaranaike International Airport’s decision to award the company the second of two duty free contracts at the Colombo airport for a period of five years.

 

Andrea Belardini, CEO Asia, Middle East and Australia at Dufry Group confirmed to TRBusiness this morning that Sri Lanka’s cabinet has approved the award, but that the company has yet to sign a contract with the airport authority.

 

As reported by TRBusiness in March this year, Flemingo International also won a five-year contract to operate the larger of two duty free shops at the airport.

 

The two shops were historically operated by Flemingo International and World Duty Free in competition with each other.

 

Originally, the airport offered two contracts comprising both departure and arrivals shops, with all bidders informed last year that in order to qualify they needed to provide a $900,000 bid security bank guarantee. However this bid process subsequently ground to a halt.

 

The Sri Lankan Ministry of Transport & Civil Aviation (MOTCA) then announced an extension of the original 24 June deadline to 7 July to give bidders more time to prepare their submissions.

TRANSFER TO NEW AIRPORT

Products that are permitted to be sold include wines and spirits, fragrances, cosmetics and toiletries, confectionery and tobacco [although tobacco sales are not permitted by law in the airport’s arrivals shops-Ed].

 

Both concessions are expected to transfer to the new $400m airport currently being constructed – provided it opens on time in 2020.

As reported, this is being funded thanks to a 40-year loan from the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA).

 

This 180,000sq m terminal building project is designed to increase the airport’s capacity by another 15m passengers a year.

 

Sri Lanka attracted just over 2m tourist arrivals (2,050,832) in 2016, corresponding to a 14% increase over the 1,798,380 total recorded by the Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority (SLTDA).