This article is from page 16 of the 2008-10-14 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 16 JPG
CALLS have been made for the hugely successful duty-free compa- ny, Aer Rianta International, (ARI) to plough back some of its profits to market Shannon Airport, where the duty-free concept was born.
As the airport faces the loss of 280 Aer Lingus jobs, a former senior management figure with ARI has said it’s payback time for the com- pany, which made pre-tax profits of €291 million in the 12 months to the end of 2007.
This was a huge increase on the €17.5 million filed with the compa- nies office for the previous year.
The company, which is based at Shannon Airport, paid ©230 million in dividends last year to its parent group, the Dublin Airport Authority and repaid €98 million to the DAA. Sales from ARI’s duty free shops in Russia, the Middle East, Europe and North America rose by 58 per cent to €69 million.
The Commonwealth of Independ- ent States – Russia and it’s former territories – accounted for €64.8 million of ARI’s turnover and their next biggest revenue contributor, the Middle East, generated sales of €2.4 million. Europe brought in €1.6 mil- lion of sales and North America was last in line with sales of €214,000.
Now a former senior management
figure, who was closely involved in setting up much of ARI’s business, has called for some of the money to be ploughed back into marketing the airport where the duty-free concept Veh o0) 60
He believes that “between 10 and 20 per cent” of ARI’s profits should be used to help Shannon in these troubled times.
There was no-one from the DAA available to comment on the proposal but it is understood that the authority would not see any compunction on ARI to contribute to any Shannon airport marketing drive.
The ARI is a company in it’s own right and apart from being based at Shannon has no other direct connec- tion with the airport.
Another company is responsible for running the duty-free shops at Shan- non, Dublin and Cork airports.
However, many supporters of the airport would see the ARI’s success as being at least in part due to the Clare facility being the first home of duty free.
In 1951 the first airport duty-free liquor shop was opened. It started as a ship’s store where airline stewards purchased supplies for re-sale to pas- sengers when the aircraft became ~Npuee) uae
Later, passengers were allowed to buy drink and tobacco at duty-free prices on a restricted basis.