Siberian Airports plans to open Taishet airport costing 15.8 bln rubles by end-2028

IRKUTSK. July 10 (Interfax) - The Rusal aluminum group's Siberian Airports LLC, formerly Rusal Aero, plans to build and open an airport in Taishet in the Irkutsk region costing an estimated 15.6 billion rubles by the end of 2028, the company's press service said.

The airport complex will cover 2,682 square meters and handle 100 passengers per hour or about 70,000 per year. The asphalt concrete runway will be able to accept Superjet 100 aircraft.

"The Irkutsk region has eight airports, all of them built in Soviet times. We plan to build an airport from scratch in the region for the first time since then. This is a very complex job that requires blueprints, a lot of approvals and a lot of construction. The airport terminal and passenger infrastructure will be built entirely with private funding," the region's governor, Igor Kobzev, was quoted as saying.

The investor has already developed and secured approval for a deed on a site for the airport in the village of Shelekhovo near Taishet district. Land has been acquired and design and cost estimates performed.

Designs for the Taishet airport were completed in July 2024. The preliminary cost of the airport was estimated at 7 billion rubles in 2022 prices.

Rusal created the Taishetaero subsidiary to build the airport, which is tied to its plans to build an aluminum smelter and anode factory in Taishet.

Siberian Airports LLC owns and operates airports in Novokuznetsk, where a new terminal opened this year, and in Bratsk, as well as Taishetaero LLC, Aeroport-Service JSC, an operator of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk airport and Capital-Avia LLC, a cargo handling firm based at Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. Siberian Airports also founded Boguchany Aero LLC to develop airport infrastructure in the north Krasnoyarsk territory, Terminal Irkutsk LLC and Terminal Abakan LLC.