The French company Aeroports de Paris (ADP) which owns a 21 percent share in the the MZLZ company operating the Zagreb Airport said it was pleased with the airport's business results in its first year of operations, and that it expected growth to continue in the coming years.
ADP is an airport management company which operates 26 airports around the world, including three in and around Paris. One of the airports ADP manages is the Zagreb Airport, where it partnered with several other shareholders to get a 30-year concession of the facility serving Croatia’s capital.
ADP’s Director of International Operations, Fernando Echegaray, told Croatian reporters in Paris that, although the newly built terminal which opened in March 2017 is one of the youngest in Europe, the airport posted one of the biggest growth in terms of traffic in Europe in 2017.
“We have a strong team at Zagreb Airport, which is very knowledgeable, and we are working hard to bring in even more passengers and airlines. In addition, Croatia, being a beautiful country that it is, has huge potential and growth in developing as a tourist destination, and that is what we base our expectations on, as well as the development of Zagreb as a tourist destination,” said Echegaray.
CEO of the MZLZ company operating the airport, Jacques Feron, said that the traffic at the airport is expected to grow this year, especially on account of predictions that the tourist season would be very good this year, as well as new routes – including new direct flights from Zagreb to Dublin and Toronto, and also the growth already witnessed in the first three months of 2018.
In the first quarter of 2018, the Zagreb Franjo Tuđman Airport handled 585,500 passengers, or 13.5 percent up from the same period in 2017, and 3,228 tonnes of cargo, or 47.6 percent up from 2017.
Airports operated by the ADP Group around the world have handled 228.2 million passengers in 2017, or 7.4 percent up from 2016, which puts them the second airport management company in the world in terms of passenger volume, behind the Spanish group Aena, which had 250 million passengers.
ADP’s revenue in 2017 totalled €3.6 billion, with a net profit of €571 million. For the period from 2016 to 2020 the company has planned some €4.6 billion worth of investments in facilities worldwide, including about €2 billion for the expansion and improvement of Paris-Charles de Gaulle airport, the group’s biggest European hub which handled 69.5 million passengers in 2017.
