Three major Turkish construction groups say they will continue chasing contracts at Saudi Arabia's planned King Salman International Airport in Riyadh, despite deadly Houthi attacks on Saudi airports in recent days.
TAV Construction, IC İçtaş Construction and Limak Construction are all pursuing work linked to Terminal 6 at the giant project, which will absorb the existing King Khalid International Airport, Türkiye Today reported on Oct. 12.
The attacks killed at least 19 people over the previous week. A strike on King Khalid International Airport on Saturday killed 12 people and injured 309, and another attack on Sunday killed one and wounded 11.
Bids still on track
TAV Chairperson Sani Şener said the company would not walk away and that bids are due to be submitted at the end of December. "For now, we are the only Turkish company," he said, referring to the terminal contest. TAV already has a track record at the site: it built Terminal 5 under a $400 million contract awarded in 2013 together with Saudi partner Al-Arrab Contracting, finishing it in 2016.
Limak is targeting runway and apron works alongside two foreign partners, though the company acknowledged that "the process is moving slowly."
IC İçtaş, working with Saudi partner Al Rashid Trading and Contracting, has completed four terminals at King Khalid, Terminals 3 and 4 in 2022 and Terminals 1 and 2 in 2025, on projects worth about $1.4 billion. In October, the same partnership won an 800 million riyal ($214 million) contract for the airport's private aviation terminal. In May, consortiums involving Limak and IC İçtaş also advanced in the Terminal 6 airfield infrastructure tender, a package that could be worth up to $800 million.
A $30 billion project
King Salman International Airport was launched in November 2022 under Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030 program. The estimated $30 billion development will cover 57 square kilometers and include six parallel runways, new passenger facilities and logistics infrastructure.
The airport is designed to handle 100 million passengers a year by 2030, rising to 185 million passengers and 3.5 million tons of cargo by 2050. Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund estimates it could add 27 billion riyals ($7.2 billion) a year to non-oil GDP and create 103,000 direct and indirect jobs.
For the Turkish bidders, the outcome of the Terminal 6 contests will show whether recent security concerns affect how the project moves forward.
Sources
Photo: Derrick Brutel / CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
