One of the world’s largest travel retail operators, Gebr. Heinemann, has been appointed as Sydney Airport’s new duty free partner, commencing February 2015.
Headquartered in Germany, Heinemann is the world’s fifth largest duty free operator and operates 234 retail outlets across more than 60 airports in 28 countries.
It currently operates the National Geographic and A Little Something stores at T1. It will also offer a multi-channel digital commerce strategy offering customers the convenience of online shopping, mobile shopping, and a digital loyalty app.
Kerrie Mather, CEO at Sydney Airport, said Heineman has extensive global expertise and will deliver a new and innovative offering for the 13 million international passengers travelling through Sydney Airport each year.
“We saw this as an opportunity to completely transform the airside experience,” Mather said.
“Heinemann will introduce more than 400 new brands to the airport tailored to our evolving passenger mix.”
The space will be reconfigured to focus on customer orientation zones and establish clear lines of sight to aircraft gates and other areas of the terminal.
“Along with wide ranging choice, another key criteria in the selection of our new duty free partner was to offer value for money to our customers, and Heinemann with its global scale has the ability to do this.”
Max Heinemann, CEO of Heinemann Asia Pacific, said the company was looking forward to partnering with Sydney Airport.
“We were particularly encouraged by Sydney Airport’s challenge to ‘rethink’ all elements of its Duty Free business because this aligns precisely with Heinemann’s philosophy of constantly challenging the status quo.
Sydney Airport conducted a global tender process, shortlisting three high quality candidates.
“We were delighted with the number of high calibre submissions from global operators who were eager to work with Sydney Airport,” Mather said.
Gebr. Heinemann will commence operations on February 17, 2015.
The contract will run for seven and a half years until August 31, 2022.
