Auckland International Airport Limited (AIA) today announced it has agreed to purchase from Westpac Bank a 24.55% stake in North Queensland Airports (NQA), the operator of Cairns and Mackay airports in Queensland, Australia for A$132.8m (approximately NZ $166m).
Auckland Airport’s chairman, Tony Frankham, said, “This is a significant milestone for Auckland Airport and for our strategy to grow beyond our core business in Auckland. This proposed acquisition opens up exciting new opportunities to strengthen and grow air services connections with Cairns as a stepping stone between New Zealand and the high-growth tourism markets of Asia, and enables us to leverage our world class expertise in the large scale movement of people and goods to grow shareholder value. As an airport operator investing in NQA, Auckland Airport will bring additional expertise. Their proposed investment is a welcome mark of confidence in the outlook for Cairns and Mackay,” Mr Zibarras said. Mr Moutter said the Cairns/Mackay investment is relatively modest (around 5%) as a proportion of Auckland Airport’s total assets. “Auckland remains our core business. It will initially be financed from existing debt facilities. Subsequently, the funding strategy is likely to involve a mixture of debt and equity consistent with Auckland Airport’s current capital structure.”
Cairns Airport is Australia’s seventh busiest airport, with approximately 3.7 million passengers in the year to 30 June 2009 (compared with Auckland Airport’s 13.0 million passengers in the same period). It is the closest international airport to Asia on Australia’s eastern seaboard and is the gateway to Tropical North Queensland, an internationally renowned tourism region boasting two World Heritage listed attractions; the Great Barrier Reef and the Wet Tropics Rainforests. Mackay Airport is an important regional domestic airport with nearly 1 million passengers in the year to 30 June 2009. The airport is the main airport servicing the Bowen Basin, an important region for natural resources, which contains one of the largest deposits of coal in the world.
