Consortium backed by Samsung bags $11-B Sangley Airport deal

MANILA, Philippines — A consortium backed by South Korean and European companies, including Samsung Group’s construction arm, secured the $11-billion deal to develop the Sangley Point International Airport in Cavite, which is expected to help decongest the overstretched Ninoy Aquino International Airport.

The Provincial Government of Cavite awarded the project to the group of companies on Thursday, according to a statement.

The Philippine firms leading the group called “SPIA Development Consortium” are Cavitex Holdings Inc. — operator of the Manila-Cavite Expressway — and House of Investments Inc. of the Yuchengco Group of Companies. Meanwhile, Samsung C&T Corp., the construction unit of South Korean tech giant Samsung, will also lead the project.

Other members of the group are Lucio Tan’s MacroAsia Corp., Munich Airport International GmbH, and Ove Arup & Partners Hongkong Ltd.

“The challenge is great, but the SPIA Development Consortium is very well prepared for the work at hand,” the consortium said in a joint statement.

An initial development deal, fronted by Macro-Asia and state-owned China Communications Construction Co. Ltd., was supposed to push through, but Cavite’s provincial government scrapped it early last year after the companies failed to comply with various requirements set when they bagged the Sangley project in February 2020. 

Once completed, the Sangley gateway project is widely expected to decongest the busy runways of NAIA, where about 8.01 million passenger movements were recorded in 2021 according to Statista, a data provider.

The Sangley Airport is envisioned as a two-runway airport with capacity for 80 million passengers yearly. The site could be expanded with four runways. 

The development project, projected to create 50,000 jobs, also includes building a 4-kilometer road that would allow rail connections and will act as a “satellite runway” to help decongest NAIA. 

Samsung C&T is responsible for the construction of Burj Khalifa, Incheon International Airport, New Ulaanbaatar International Airport and the ongoing Taoyuan International Airport’s terminal 3 expansion. The company has more than 40 years of construction and engineering experience. 

Meanwhile, Ove Arup & Partners Hong Kong Limited were partners to some land reclamation and projects such as Kansai International Airport, New Kunming International Airport, Dalian Airport, Western Sydney Airport, New Istanbul Airport, New Mexico City International Airport. 

Sought for comment, Terry Ridon, lead convenor at infrastrcuture think tank Infrawatch PH, said the government needs to be clear on whether taxpayers will be reimbursed for improvements done in the past. 

“While we welcome private initiatives in infrastructure, the PPP partners should first clarify whether the national government will be reimbursed on the improvements made in Sangley airport in the past few years,” he said. 

“Nonetheless, the new project will have to compete with existing airports, NAIA and Clark, for both passengers and airlines, as the road network into Sangley remains underdeveloped compared to the expressways connecting to these existing airport hubs,” he added.