Sunshine Coast Airport CEO Update

Transcript

Peter Pallot:What are we excited about right at the moment? We're just coming off 12 months growth at 13%, which is fantastic news for the Sunshine Coast. And on top of that, of course, we've seen the— in this year since we last spoke, of course, the return of Qantas. to the Sunshine Coast with their Sydney services and recent announcement, of course, of Qantas not just to Sydney but back to Melbourne again. Adelaide, new Adelaide services that will start on the 1st of October, and we're seeing about 25% growth again in Air New Zealand, so that's been a huge growth for us over the time. The Sunshine Coast at the moment is going through an absolute purple patch. Investment is huge, we've got great projects happening, you know, the new Sunshine Coast Maroochydore CBD, of course, is the first real CBD in the country. Sunshine Coast University Hospital's coming up out of the ground. We've got housing developments, 50,000 people coming to Caloundra. That's the size of Gladstone being built on the Sunshine Coast. So the economy's ticking over really well. Tourism is at an all-time high with the great work being done by Visit Sunshine Coast. And that's not just sort of Sydney and Melbourne, which have been great, but also into Auckland and other places. The Sunny Coast is really on fire. The new runway project has been on the cards for some time, and of course we've only just recently, in the last 2 weeks, got our environmental approvals. We've appointed our project director, and we're well on the way to delivering that piece of infrastructure. Of course, that's part of the business as usual, and one of the other exciting things that we've, we've achieved in the last 12 development is we've gone to our Level 3 carbon accreditation, so one of the very few airports in Australia and in Southeast Asia to achieve Level 3, and we're very, very proud of that. All I can say on that is that we, that Sunshine Coast Council, who's the owner of Sunshine Coast Airport, is going through a transaction process and expressions of interest are out there in the marketplace, and that's a piece of work that will evolve. Last year, Air New Zealand, of course, we did an increased capacity and increased length over the winter season, but it was the first time that we've actually done flights over the Christmas period, and they were fabulous. Overall, 69% growth in New Zealand for last year, and that's brilliant. And the capacity that came on got filled, and for Australia, it was Inbound New Zealanders coming to the Sunshine Coast, they stay longer than the average New Zealander, they spend more, and that was worth, with flow-on effects, about $55 million to our regional economy. So brilliant. The return of Qantas is a great shot in the arm to our region. It's a great brand, works nicely with everything else that we're doing on the Sunshine Coast. It's important that it's an early morning business flight, so it's an overnighting flight. It's been very, very well patronised. I mean, you've got to book well in advance to get a seat. It's going so well that they've announced additional services to— for the leisure, and of course the introduction of Melbourne later this year is brilliant. The whole region is really going off.

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