Binladin group wins $7.2 billion Jeddah contract

The Saudi Binladin Group has won a 27.1-billion-riyal ($7.2-billion) deal to build a new terminal and infrastructure at Jeddah international airport, the Saudi airports authority announced.

The project, to be completed over 36 months, will expand the capacity of the King Abdul Aziz International Airport to 30 million passengers per year from the current traffic of 17 million passengers, the General Authority on Civil Aviation said in a statement.

The contract for the deal was signed by Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz, the country’s defence and aviation minister, in Agadir, Morocco, the statement said.

In the three-year project Binladin, the country’s largest builder, will construct a single 670,000-square-metre terminal with 94 aircraft bays to replace the two ageing facilities currently handling airport traffic. It will also build what the statement called the world’s tallest airport control tower at 133 metres, and infrastructure linking the terminal with roads and the planned high-speed railway that will join Jeddah with Mecca and Medina.