'Mystery' Chinese group new owners of Frankfurt-Hahn Airport
#After several weeks of speculation, the new buyer of the loss-making Frankfurt Hahn Airport was revealed to be the Chinese construction company Shanghai Yiqian Trading Company, for a sum said to be in the "low double-digit million euro range." However, mystery still surrounds the business activities of the buyer.
The airport, 125 km and a two-hour ride west of Frankfurt, has been loss-making for years. It ended 2014 with a loss of €45m, and expects to lose €16m this year.
The final round of bidding included two other Chinese companies, according to German news agency dpa, including the state-owned Henan Civil Aviation Development (HNCA). Reuters reported that SYT counts as one of the leading distributors for the construction and retail sector in China.
However, most German media reporting on the purchase have been having great difficulty finding out any information about the company. The Shanghai Guo Qing Investment Company appears to be a well-known construction company and is an investor in SYT, but Chinese official government sources in Germany seemed clueless about the company itself.
According to the ruling CDU party in Rhineland-Palatinated, the SYT company representative they have been dealing with, a Mr Yu Tao Chou, is a doctor and a pilot who has apparently flown into Hahn many times. Assurances have been forthcoming from as high up as the state's prime minister Ms. Malu Dreyer that the company's bona fides have been verified and the Bank of China has confirmed the company's liquidity. Government approval is required for the deal to be sanctioned.
SYT bought the 82.5% stake held in the airport by the state of Rhineland Palatinate. The remaining 17.5% is owned by the neighbouring state of Hesse, in which Frankfurt am Main is located. It is said in media reports to be "in the home stretch" of negotiations with SYT to buy out its stake as well. Fraport, which operates the international flight hub Frankfurt Airport, sold its share to Rhineland-Palatinate in 2009 for a single euro. Despite this latest sale, the airport is still expected to receive about €50m in state subsidies until 2024.
The airport started life as a US military airbase before being converted to commercial use in 1993. Since then it has been mainly used by discount airlines, principally Ryanair, although the Irish airline has been gradually shifting more of its planes and traffic to other German airports including Cologne. While passenger numbers rose by 9% to 2.67m last year, reversing years of declines (they numbered nearly 4m ten years ago), freight volume fell by 39.9% to 79,700 tonnes.
Chinese investors have form in buying up regional German airports. In 2014 a Chinese investor bought the insolvent Lübeck airport in northern Germany and planned to develop a medical tourism business. The plan failed and the airport filed for insolvency again a year later.
In 2007 another unknown Chinese freight company bought an old Russian military airport in Parchim in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, near the main road between Berlin and Hamburg, with plans to turn it into a freight and passenger hub. The plan was to operate cargo and passenger flights from the central Chinese city of Zhengzhou. Thousands of jobs were promised, the airport was going to become a major hub, and a major centre of Chinese culture in Europe. So far not one cargo plane has landed from China, and nearly all the promised building works have failed to materialise.