Oslo Gardermoen Airport is planning to double the size of Europe’s most successful duty free arrivals shop and introduce two new departure stores, after extending Travel Retail Norway and Gebr. Heinemann’s contract for all Norway’s international airports by a further five years to 2022.

 

Travel Retail Norway generated €420m ($455m) in total sales at Oslo Gardermoen Airport last year, but speaking to TRBusiness exclusively, Espen Ettre, the Airport’s Director of Property and Commercial Development admitted that the retail areas are clearly congested.

 

While duty free sales ‘did well last year’, he says the result could have been much better but for the congestion and lack of cash tills to physically process orders.

 

As a result, the airport and Travel Retail Norway are now entirely focused on the biggest passenger infrastructure and duty free expansion plan in the airport’s history.

 

This will involve the doubling of the present arrivals shop space to 4,000sq m and the creation of two new outlets comprising 2,000sq m each. Most of this operation will be housed in the new $1.7bn pier, which is currently under construction and scheduled to open in 2017, although the first shop will open in the last quarter of next year.

 

 

Ettre said: “Due to the heavy growth in passengers we have to expand and by April 2017 we will be ready to accommodate 28m passengers annually,” he said.

 

“The new terminal will effectively be a new pier and the new arrivals and departures hall addition will cover 52,000sq m. The capacity in the departure hall will also be increased with 34 new walk-through type check-in desks, which are more efficient and flexible and also designed to shorten queues. There will also be a new baggage system.”

 

He continued: “We are going to have a really large arrival shop which is going up in size from 2,000sq m to 4,000sq m and on departure we will also have two shops – each with about 2,000sq m. The first of these will open in October or November 2016.

 

“We are actually in a very large tender stage now where we are tendering food and beverage kiosks and shops and all of the retail offers in the terminals – except duty free and the banks.

 

“We are just going through the presentations from the various competitors for these concessions now and of course, it is a very large job, because [in the new pier] we are increasing that sales area from about 10,000sq m to 22,000 to 23,000sq m in total.”

 

Travel Retail Norway is a joint venture between Norway’s Norse-Trade AS and Gebr. Heinemann and it operates ‘duty free and travel retail outlets’ at all of Avinor’s international airports of Oslo Gardermoen, Stavanger, Bergen, Trondheim, and Kristiansand.

 

 

Duty free sales and associated rental income from all these airports handling international traffic generated NK.2,526m ($309m) or 47.1% of the total in 2014, with most of it generated at Oslo.

 

To put this into context, car parking was the next biggest contributor to Avinor’s non-aeronautical revenues at 16.5% last year, with no other commercial income category contributing more than 10% as a single entity to Avinor’s coffers.

 

[A detailed interview with Espen Ettre, Oslo Gardermoen Airport’s Director of Property and Commercial Development will appear in the August issue of TRBusiness magazine].