Nantes concession to be decided soon: part one – no new airport, but existing one to be improved

VINCI Airports has built up an admirable track record in its homeland of France where it manages 12 airports under varying models. It is not easy to operate there as local Chambres de Commerce, which historically managed them on behalf of the French government, invariably want to retain a say in that management.

One of them is at Nantes, one of France’s most economically significant cities, where VINCI has managed the Atlantique airport (and another one at nearby Saint Nazaire) under concession since 2011. Good progress has been made, and passenger numbers have more than doubled in a decade.

But VINCI’s long concession there was tied into a contract to build and manage a new airport – a project which was cancelled by the government in 2018 following large scale protests, and occasioning a compensation claim from VINCI, which had started work on the project.

The negotiations for a new concession on the Atlantique airport are almost complete and all the indications are that VINCI will be successful again. But France will be left with an old and unsuitable airport to be expanded piecemeal; and at cost by way of a new terminal and a runway extension, and with no guarantees that protests will not return in respect of the latter, as well as being out of pocket to VINCI’s compensation claim.

There may be no winners in this debacle.

This is part one of a two-part report.