POLAND. Baltona Duty Free has secured a master concession to operate stores, restaurants and cafés at the new Warsaw-Radom Airport. A recruitment drive to staff the upcoming openings has commenced ahead of the airport hosting its first commercial flight on 28 April.
Last autumn, construction of the Warsaw-Radom Airport terminal was completed. The airport is owned by the state-run Polish Airports State Enterprise (PPL) which took over the investment’s management in 2018.
Grzegorz Tuszyński, the Director of Warsaw-Radom Airport, told The Moodie Davitt Report that the new terminal has been built with an allocation of 2,300sq m commercial space.
The project to build the airport is estimated to be worth about PLN 800 million (€171 million), according to data from the company.
In 2020, PPL became a majority shareholder of Baltona, acquiring shares from Flemingo International.
PPL has announced that this year the Radom-based airport will launch its first three foreign destinations: Paris, Rome, and Copenhagen. Three flights per week for each destination will be operated by Poland’s state-run LOT Polish Airlines, using Boeing 737-800 aircraft.
Warsaw-Radom is also scheduled to host charter flights starting this summer. The terminal has been built to accommodate about 3 million passengers per year.
Despite its cooperation with LOT, the airport declared that it intends to mostly handle charter and low-cost airline flights, partnering with airlines such as Wizz Air and Ryanair.
Located about 108km south of the Polish capital Warsaw’s city centre, the airport will compete against the Warsaw-Modlin Airport which has a similar profile, and is located about 36km north-west of Warsaw centre.
Warsaw-Modlin was built to complement Warsaw-Chopin Airport, Poland’s premier travel hub, as a hub for low-cost airlines. The airport handled about 3.1 million passengers in 2022.
Data released by the International Air Transport Association (IATA) suggests that Warsaw-Radom will reach the level of some 1.8 million passengers annually by 2040.
PPL holds stakes in 12 airports in the Polish market, including Warsaw-Chopin, Warsaw-Modlin, Szczecin, Rzeszów, Poznań, Olsztyn, Bydgoszcz, Wrocław, Katowice, Radom, Zielona Góra, and Gdańsk. 
