FlyEurope.TV is in Rimini. We are with Dr. Andrea Del Vecchio from Novaport Italia who submitted a proposal to operate Rimini airport.
Please tell us about Novaport Italia.
R. Novaport Italia is a company that manages, builds, renovates and whatever.. airports. It essentially deals with airport management.
Novaport Italia is part of an important International Holding which owns seven airports in the world.
Then we manage ten other airports, so we can tell that we can rely on a network of 17 airports.
D. Could you please sum up the main points of your proposal?
R. I can basically give you some figures. We have calculated, even after consulting IATA, that this airport today with the existing structure, can reach over 2.800.000 passengers. I remind you that it counts today 500.000 passengers.
With the appropriate investments that we have already decided to make, renovating the entire airport area we can also exceed this number.
For the renovations, by today, during the presentation of the industrial plan, we have allocated 41 Million Euro. Then we will adjust accordingly.
D. Which should be Rimini airport’s points of strength?
R. You see.. Let’s start from a fact. The most important hotel sector in the world in terms of numbers is Miami, U.S.A. The second-one is Rimini area.
So starting from this fact we must carry on with the airport projects. And this is a great point of strength.
Rimini is located in a central area of Italy and Italy is located in a central position of the Mediterranean area from a geographic point of view.
So we are convinced that Rimini airport can attract flights from places in the world which are extraordinarily developing as the former Soviet Union area, China and Middle East.
D. San Marino has the opportunity to manage a part of Rimini Airport. If you won this tender how would you relate with San Marino Republic?
R. We would relate with them collaborating and creating synergies.
Please remember that we are a big Holding so we can financially count on our own capital.
We don’t need to ask money to the banks, to entrepreneurs or whatever. We have resources, we have many resources.
I just tell you a fact. Novosibirsk in Russia is one of the airports we directly manage. We spent 600 Million dollars for its renovation.
So if in the future we had to relate with San Marino Republic, (this relation can be very important for us, being also an experiment almost unique in the world), working in a synergic way, we would do it with big pleasure providing all our skills, professionalism and even economic resources.
D. On September 28th ENAC will communicate who is the winner of the tender. In case you win, which will be the first step you’ll take once entering in Rimini airport?
R. The first step is to immediately start renovating as the airport is outdated and so it is no longer functional according to modern standards. In primis we should start improving practicability and traffic regulations. The access to the airport is now really hard.
Then we have to renovate the whole structure. Beside modernizing, we would like to widen the structure by 10.000 square meters. We would like to widen aircrafts parkings by 12.000 square meters. These will be our first interventions.
I would also like to say few words about employees, about the staff because we are convinced that human resources are one of the three most important elements for a company.
I’m convinced that people who are now working are doing miracles because they are working in a bankrupting airport. So it is not easy for them.
According to our targets the 78 workers can be functional to the today passengers traffic.
But for our passengers traffic targets they are not sufficient.
We need these 78 employees still working in this moment but we will for sure increase the staff, in proportion to the passengers’ increase.
And I would like to train these persons, I would like to introduce internships from high schools to the airport also according to the new internship regulations in Emilia Romagna. I think these are very important things.
D. We congratulate for your important targets good luck for September 28th and thank you for your intervention.
R. I thank you!
