TIRANA, April 13 – China Everbright, a Chinese state-owned investment company, has been unveiled as the company which is negotiating with the Tirana International Airport consortium to take over the country’s sole international airport. The negotiations are confirmed by TIA’s chief executive Rolf Castro-Vasquez who told Monitor magazine that the Chinese company is negotiating with shareholders to acquire the Tirana airport.
In late 2015, China Everbright announced plans to invest in airport and infrastructure assets in Europe as part of Beijing’s “One Belt One Road” initiative, a plan to wrap its own infrastructure and influence westward by land and by sea.
“As part of our ‘going out’ strategy, we have short-listed a few airport terminals and infrastructure projects in Europe as potential acquisition targets,” Chen Shuang, China Everbright’s CEO said in late 2015.
“We plan to complete the acquisitions of overseas assets in three to five years and turn some of them into logistic hubs, providing a transit between China and Europe” he was quoted as saying by Finance Asia.
China Everbright International Limited is an investment holding company. Through its subsidiaries, the company’s principal activities are environmental energy project construction and operation, including waste-to-energy power plants, industrial solid and hazardous waste landfill.
The ongoing negotiations come at a time when the exclusive rights that the country’s sole international airport has been holding on international flights for a decade have finally been lifted, paving the way for the operation of new airports that would increase competition and reduce current ticket prices, estimated among the region’s highest. The deal is expected to activate the new United Arab Emirates-funded Kukes airport in north-eastern Albania and the construction of two new airports in southern Albania serving the tourism industry.
The long-awaited agreement comes after two years of intensive negotiations with the Tirana International Airport concessionaire, which will benefit a 2-year extension of its original 20-year build-operate-transfer concession contract for the opening of the new Kukes airport and half a year for each of the expected new Vlora and Saranda airports.
The consortium’s shareholders now include AviAlliance GmbH, a subsidiary of Canada-based PSP Investments with 47 percent, Germany’s DEG with 31.7 percent and the Albanian-American Enterprise Fund with a 21.3 percent stake.
