GMR Hyderabad International Airport Ltd (GHIAL) has initiated steps to rope in partners for its aerospace park. GHIAL is in talks with all the domestic airlines and hopes to finalise a few tenants by the end of this year. The domestic airliners have evinced interest in expanding their operations, and are bullish on the aviation opportunities. The aerospace park, located in a 250-acre special economic zone, is expected to be fully operational by end of 2010. The project entails an investment of over Rs 1,500 crore.
GHIAL is the developer and operator of the Rajiv Gandhi International Airport (RGIA) in Hyderabad. GHIAL, the first public-private-partnership venture in the Indian airports sector, commissioned the airport on March 23, 2008. The project partners are GMR Infrastructure Ltd (63%), Malaysia Airports Holdings Berhad (11%), the Airport Authority of India (13%) and the government of Andhra Pradesh (13%).
?The designing work for the park is complete and we will soon float tenders for construction,? P Sripathy, chief executive officer, GHIAL, said. ?We are in talks with all the domestic airliners, and a few tenants are expected to be finalised in the next two months,? he added. Perhaps it would start with services and then look into integration of all the services. Recently, it has signed a joint venture agreement with Malaysia Airlines for developing an airframe MRO, which will undertake up to ?D? checks on B737, A320 and up to ?C? checks on B777 and A310 aircraft in the country.
Besides the airliners, GHIAL is also in talks with component makers and other end-to-end service players. Incidentally, GHIAL has signed a memorandum of agreement with the world’s leading aircraft engine manufacturer, CFM International, for setting up a new CFM56 maintenance training centre to support all its customers in the south Asian region.
According to reports, the growth in civil and defence aviation in the country in the next decade will create demand for aircraft aftermarket services like MRO and training. The estimated market size in civil aviation alone will be $1,570 million by 2018. This opens up attractive business opportunities for aerospace related businesses. A majority of MRO activities like airframe, engine and component and associated training requirements of Indian airlines are currently being off shored to south east Asia, the West Asia and the Chinese market owing to the lack of competent third party facilities in India.