As Celebi gets barred, Adani plans to enter ground handling business

Adani group is readying to enter the business of airport ground handling, Arun Bansal CEO of the group’s airport arm Adani Airport Holdings Limited (AAHL) said.

AAHL will float a separate company to win contracts of various airports, which will be up for bidding following the exit of Turkish firm Celebi Airport Services Limited, whose security clearance was revoked by Bureau of Civil Aviation Security (BCAS) government after Turkey supported Pakistan during the recent geopolitical conflict.

Ground handling includes services like passenger handling and check-in, baggage handling, cargo handling and management, aircraft servicing and maintenance, ramp services, and catering.

The group, which owns eight airports, including the Mumbai and upcoming Navi Mumbai, has hired Anurag Srivastava, who earlier headed ground handling business for Bird group, as CEO.

Adani will face competition from Air India SATS- a joint venture of Air India and Singapore’s SATS, Bird group, Indothai and government owned AI Airport Services Limited.

“We will participate in the tender of Mumbai airport. There is opportunity at the eight airports currently owned by us but we will also look to provide services to other airports,” Bansal told ET on Tuesday on the sidelines of the Annual General Meeting of International Air Transport Association at New Delhi.

Celebi Aviation Holding, the parent of Celebi Airport Services, operated ground handling services at nine airports in India including Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru, Cochin, Hyderabad and Goa airports.

Following the cancellation of security license of Celebi India’s top metro airports including Delhi, Bengaluru and Adani-owned Mumbai airport terminated contracts with the company and temporarily replaced them with other operators.

India’s ground handling policy mandates that that every major airport with annual passenger traffic of at least a million must have three ground handlers while non-major airports must have two.

The Adani Group is looking to get into all the allied businesses in the airport sector where it is trying to consolidate its position.

People in the know said that the group has chalked out a plan where it will try to grow the business in two ways — one by acquiring more airports and the second by moving into various segments of airport services like maintenance, repair and operations (MRO) and ground handling, duty free stores.

The group will invest over Rs 10,000 crore in FY 26 and plans to demerge its airports division within the next 3 to 5 years and do a public listing.

Last year it acquired India’s oldest MRO, AirWorks, at an enterprise value of Rs 400 crore and is entering more than two dozen retailing categories on its own hoping to cash in on a captive consumer base - over 300 million people who travel through or visit its airports annually.