All change in Brazil; investment, new and re-bid concessions and a further 50 airports to be offered

The Brazilian airport concession process, which began in 2011, has come a long way since then, with many of the country's airports now under contract to a variety of mainly western operators, while in latter tranches more Brazilian companies came on board when the smaller airports became available (of which there are many).

Along that road there have been successes and failures, economic crises, the COVID-19 pandemic, complaints about misinformation concerning traffic forecasts, and a handful of re-concessions.

Now the second phase is being entered, one of maturity in the marketplace, in which concessionaires are being pressed for enhanced investment in the properties, and in some cases being offered a carrot to do so.

Going hand-in-hand with that is a sudden and unexpected renewal of the procedure to offload even more of the small regional airports, those which are there for social rather the business or tourism purposes, and those that were expected to be managed by the state operator Infraero as its role changed.

The seventh concession tranche was anticipated to be the one which wrapped up the process, but there is life in the old dog yet, as the government incentivises existing concessionaires to invest in these isolated airports - bundled up in groups of six like a fire sale - by dangling the attraction of an extension of the existing contract.

Whether that will be enough to attract them is yet to be determined.