New Quito Airport

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In September 2002, the Ecuador government granted a 35-year contract project with the Corporacion Quiport S.A. consortium to build and operate a new airport in Puembo, 25km outside Quito. The contract was also involved a management contract to operate existing Mariscal Sucre Airport until the new airport began commercial operations. The new site in Puembo was about 15 times the area of Mariscal Sucre and the runway was expected to measure 3600 meters while the Mariscal Sucre’s runway had 500 meters. Under the contracts, operating profits from Mariscal Sucre airport were to fund the construction of the new airport. After some changes in the sponsor composition in 2002, Corporacion Quiport was owned by Canadian Aecon (30%), Brasilian Andrade Gutierrez (30%), US Houston Airport System (HAS) (25%) and Canadain Airport Development Corporation (ADC) (15%). Under the sponsor agreement, HAS and ADC were delegated the operation of Mariscal Sucre airport, while the other two partners were responsible for design and construction of the new airport. The cost of the new airport was estimated at a $585 million. The new airport project reached financial closure in August 2005 when Corporacion Quiport obtained loans for US$$359 million. The financing broke down into US$$200 million from Overseas Private Investment Corporation, US$75 million from the Inter American Development Bank, US$37.5 million from Canada's Export Development Corporation, and US$57.75 million from US Export-Import Bank. All four facilities were signed with a 15 year tenor, with small differences in final maturity to take account of differing repayment schedules. MIGA was set to guarantee sponsors' equity investments. The new airport was planned to be constructed under a 51-month fixed-price engineer/procure/construct contract signed between the City of Quito and the Canadian Commercial Corporation (CCC), a Crown agency of the Canadian government. The CCC, in turn, subcontracted 100% of construction work to an equal part joint venture between Aecon and Andrade Gutierrez. Corporacion Aeropuerto y Zona Franca del Distrito Metropolitano de Quito (Corpaq), Quito's municipal airport authority, was the public agency granting the contract. Corpaq was established to assume control of the airport from civil aviation authority (DAC). While the central government provided top-level assurance that the concession would not be expropriated, Corpaq conducted the negotiations and was responsible for security and its other obligations under the concession agreement. The project was designed in 2001 after Canadian Aecon approached the Ecuadorian government with an unsolicited proposal to build a new airport for Quito, an infrastructure needed for over three decades. The Ecuadorian government decided to use a Swiss challenge process to deal with Aecon’s proposal. By September 2001, Corpaq and Aecon came out with a project structure (management rights for existing and new airports and a construction contract) that a competing bidder would have to match, but there were no other bids. The contract was then awarded to Corporacion Quiport, a consortium led by Aecon. Operations of the new facility commenced in November 2013. In June 2015, the shareholding structure of Quiport was changed as CCR, a partnership of the Brazilian companies Serveng, Camargo Correa and Andrade Gutierrez (48.78% of CCR's shares were floated in the Brazilian stock market), increased its stake to 50% and the Colombian group Odinsa acquired the remaining 50% shares from the previous sponsors.