Spain's Chinese rescue package: €1b 'ghost airport' snapped up for just €10,000
Ciudad Real airport was on sale at a knockdown price of €40 million
A Chinese company that was the only bidder for one of Spain's "ghost airports" wants to revive the site as a cargo hub for the Asian market.
Ciudad Real airport, one of the most notorious emblems of Spain's economic crash, cost €1 billion (HK$8.4 billion) to build and was on sale at a knockdown price of €40 million.
Tzaneen International was the sole bidder in the bankruptcy auction, however, and it offered just €10,000.
The facilities of the deserted site, 160km south of Madrid, include a runway long enough to land an Airbus A380, the world's largest passenger plane, along with a terminal that could handle 10 million travellers per year.
Appropriately for such a vainglorious project, the La Mancha airport was previously named after the region's most famous, and deluded, literary export: Don Quixote.
But the Chinese company, which was set up in March with just €4,000 in capital, believes it can succeed where others have failed.
Its initial €10,000 outlay buys all the land and most of the buildings, including the runway and control tower. Tzaneen says it also wants to acquire the terminal building and the car parks and is prepared to invest up to €100 million in the project because "there are several Chinese companies that want to make the airport the European point of entry for cargo".
Tzaneen International said the airport would be revived as a cargo hub for the Chinese market. "The purchase is the first step towards creating a hub in the Ciudad Real area specialising in the transport, storage and distribution of cargo from various geographical zones, with special attention to the Chinese market, as a bridgehead for manufactured products as well as semi-manufactured goods which could be finished in Castilla La-Mancha," the company said.
The airport failed to find a buyer when it was put up for auction at €100 million last year. Earlier this year, it was reduced to €80 million and finally to €40 million.
Because the Chinese offer doesn't come close to 70 per cent of the asking price, rival bidders have 20 days in which to come forward with a better offer. A final ruling is expected September.
When Ciudad Real airport closed, the administrators said its backers had never carried out an investment analysis and "produced a financial plan that was not based on any studies of the market or of demand that would justify the anticipated traffic".
The airport became a symbol of the spendthrift years during which local political barons who, seeking to emulate the transformative success of Bilbao's Guggenheim Museum, raided savings banks to build cultural centres, roads and high-speed rail links.
Two other new passenger airports - Lleida in Catalonia and Castelló near Valencia - remain unused, further evidence of Spain's unsustainable boom.
Ciudad Real has a population of just 75,000. Unemployment in the Castilla La-Mancha region stands at 28.5 per cent and at 22 per cent in Ciudad Real.
