An airplane approaches Fiumicino airport in Rome in October, 2018.Max Rossi/Reuters
A new Canadian aviation company, Centerline Airport Partners, has made its first purchase, in northern Italy, and plans to invest in other underused airports around the world.
Centerline, whose headquarters are in Vancouver, bought 51 per cent of Parma International Airport, halfway between Bologna and Milan in Italy’s wealthy industrial heartland and the home of Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese. Centerline agreed to pay €13-million ($19-million) over three years for the stake and, with the Emilia-Romagna regional government, plans to invest €20-million over the next four years to upgrade the small airport.
In an interview, Centerline chief executive officer Andrew O’Brian, 54, said the airport is small and losing money but has a lot of potential because the large international airports within a couple of hours by train or car from Parma are “saturated.”
The five-year target, he said, is to boost passenger traffic to 700,000 passengers a year from the current 125,000, a tiny amount compared with Italy’s bigger airport (Rome’s top airport pushed through 4½ million passengers in May alone). Ryanair, Europe’s biggest budget airline, is Parma airport’s main client, with two to three flights a day.
“The airport has had great difficulties for many years,” Mr. O’Brian said. “What it needs to thrive is an injection of capital and the experience of our team. Parma is a diamond in the rough. We have a big catchment area here.”
Centerline was formed two years ago by Mr. O’Brian, an airport veteran who was most recently the CEO of Reach Airports, a joint venture between Munich Airport International, Carlyle Group and other aviation entrepreneurs and investment managers. He and Greg Evans, chairman of Universal Weather and Aviation, a business-jet services company, own 60 per cent of Centerline.
Centerline is raising US$50-million to US$100-million in its first financing round to build and buy airports.
Mr. O’Brian said the Parma airport plan includes extending the runway by 150 metres, allowing it to take jets as large as Boeing 757s. Centerline also intends to buy battery-powered equipment such as aircraft-moving tractors in an effort to reduce the airport’s carbon footprint, and launch a marketing campaign aimed at attracting European airlines.
He said Centerline’s research has determined that more than four million potential passengers a year in the Parma area rely on airports in Bologna, Milan and elsewhere for their travel. The goal is to divert hundreds of thousands of them to the Parma airport.
Centerline has several other small airports on its wish list. Negotiations are under way to invest in Aarhus Airport in Denmark and the Jacqueline Cochran Regional Airport in Southern California, formerly Thermal Army Airfield.
Mr. O’Brian said his company is also in “advanced discussions” to invest in a private airport in Western Canada. He would not reveal its name.