European Investment Bank backs Schiphol airport expansion

The European Investment Bank has agreed to a €350m loan to Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport to help finance the construction of a new pier and a small new terminal building, which increase passenger capacity by an annual 15 million, the airport authority said.

The agreement for the first €175m tranche was signed on Thursday. The new pier will be completed at the end of 2019 and the new terminal will be operational in 2023. The airport will also expand and renovate internal roads and parking garages in that period.

‘Schiphol is the visiting card for the Netherlands and further development of the airport is necessary in this time of continuous modernisation and growth,’said EIB vice president Pim van Ballekom. ‘The EIB has supported Schiphol in the past, by the addition of the fifth runway and the new baggage-handling system for example, and we hope to continue this in the future,’he added.

Passenger numbers at Schiphol grew by 9.2% to 63.6 million in 2016, making the Amsterdam airport Europe’s third-largest after London’s Heathrow and Charles de Gaulle in Paris, according to the Financieele Dagblad.

In addition to the EIB, the work will be financed by bonds and operational cash flow, Schiphol said. The airport plans to invest about €600m a year in maintenance, accessibility, improvements and expansion of capacity. The overflow airport at Lelystad will be operational for longer flights from 2018.

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