Airport Show: Nexans delivering on King Abdulaziz Airport

Almabani is the general contractor for the current airfield facilities upgrade project at  KAIA that forms part of a major redevelopment of the airport to expand its capacity to 80  million passengers per year from the current 13 million.

The airport will also have the capability to handle the new Airbus A380  Superjumbo aircraft.

The Nexans contract includes the supply of some 1,500 km of 5 kV easy-to-install and watertight primary cables to connect the airfield power network to the lighting transformers located on the runways that power the airfield  lights.

 “Almabani awarded this contract to Nexans because we offered a well proven, high–specification product with safe advanced fire-behaviour cables,” said Paolo Pieri,  Airport Infrastructure Business Segment Manager  of Nexans.

The cables for KAIA are manufactured at Nexans’ plant based in Lyon, France. KAIA’s capacity is projected at 80 million passengers per year. The airport is the gateway to Saudi Arabia for a large number of pilgrims due to its proximity to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina.

The redevelopment will take place in three stages, the first of which should be completed by the first quarter of 2011. At the end of the first stage the airport's capacity will increase from 13 million passengers to 30 million passengers each year. The expansion of the airport includes the construction of  a support services building, renovation  of the existing South and North Terminals and upgrades to the existing runway and airfield  systems to accommodate the Airbus A380.

A typical Nexans airfield cable such as those being used at KAIA