Just before Covid hit, the state-owned company that runs nine of South Africa’s airports had a plan for vacant land at OR Tambo International Airport. ACSA wanted to develop a 180 000m mixed-use precinct, on roughly 8.5 hectares, across seven phases: offices, a hotel, retail and conference facilities, all built on airport-owned land.
Phase one — the smallest slice of the plan — was costed at R4.5 billion. It would comprise three six-storey office buildings totalling 30 000m, plus around 2 000 parking bays.
The pandemic halted air travel. Passenger numbers collapsed, ACSA’s revenue went with them and a plan built on the assumption that more and more people would keep flying became a luxury nobody could afford. The hotel, conference centre and most of the retail space were shelved. The project was scrapped, except phase one, which survived.
What got built was Aviation Park: 33 000m of office space across three buildings with parking underneath, home to ACSA’s head office. Compared with the original 180 000m vision, that’s only around a fifth of the full precinct.
The first phase was undertaken by a consortium consisting of Tiber Construction, SOM, MMQSMace and Heri Prop Co. Construction was under way when Covid hit. With the consortium working with ACSA to manage project cash flow, construction continued. This phase, valued at more than R1bn, was handed over on time and within budget in 2021.
“Building through that period was a real challenge due to the uncertain future of air travel and the cash constraints placed on the pro-ject due to ACSA’s cash flow being seriously impaired by the closing down of air travel at the time,” says Fernando Cardoso, the Group CEO of Tiber Construction.
“We were delivering the one piece of ACSA’s precinct vision that had to happen, regardless of what air travel looked like on the other side of the pandemic.”
ACSA’s results for the 2025/26 financial year point back to the shelved precinct. Revenue rose 11.6% to R8.81bn, profit after tax climbed to R1.2bn (up from R1.14bn the pre-vious year) and passenger numbers have recovered to 98% of pre-Covid levels. The demand has come back.
The commercial case for land like the Western Precinct comes down to how an airport makes money. ACSA earns revenue in two ways. One works like a toll booth: landing fees and passenger charges paid by airlines every time a plane and its passengers move through the airport, which ACSA calls “aeronautical revenue.” The other works like being a landlord and shopping centre owner rolled into one: rent from shops, parking, car hire, hotel rooms and advertising space, known as “non-aeronautical revenue”. The second stream brought in R4.13bn this year, or 47% of ACSA’s total revenue.
This is the kind of income a Western Precinct-style development would have added. Retail was the single biggest line at R1.38bn (up by 11% from the previous year), property rental brought in R1.1bn (up by 5%) and the hotel side of the business — the one hotel ACSA has — generated R290 million (up by 8%). The positive numbers speak to the commercial potential.
That’s presumably why ACSA has elevated what it calls “asset creation” to a strategic objective of its own, sitting alongside goals like growing aeronautical revenue and cutting its environmental impact. ACSA’s board is saying that its vacant and underused land should be used as a lever for growth, with the same status as running safe, efficient runways.
ACSA has put a rough number on it — R37bn of capital investment by 2031, with R15bn of that prioritised for the next two years. The R37bn is ACSA’s estimate of infrastructure spend across its nine-airport network —runways, terminals, technology and cargo facilities included — not a confirmed figure earmarked for commercial property or backed by signed private investors.
ACSA’s numbers show it does not always deliver what it plans. This year it budgeted R1.85bn in capital spending and delivered R1.08bn. Over the five-year infrastructure pro-gramme that started in 2024, it has executed about 70% of what it had planned. The R37bn figure counts for something but it reflects intent rather than commitment.
One project inside that plan is new information — about cargo. ACSA is investigating a Midfield Cargo development at OR Tambo, reported elsewhere at a project value of around R5.7bn, split between aeronautical infrastructure like taxiways and apron space and non-aeronautical infrastructure like warehousing, with construction potentially running for more than four years.
It’s sitting in ACSA’s “feasibility portfolio”, meaning it’s being studied rather than committed. But ACSA’s results presentation projects that cargo volumes across its network could reach 1.24 million tonnes by 2029/30 — roughly two and a half times this year’s volume of just over 500 000 tonnes — driven by pharmaceuticals, e-commerce, aerospace parts, perishables, diamonds and metals and automotive components. For a city the size of Johannesburg, cargo growth on that scale needs warehouses, cold-storage facilities and logistics parks built close to a runway. OR Tambo is the obvious place for a developer to look.
In ACSA’s strategy documents, it mentions the concept of an aerotropolis. The idea originates from aviation and urban planning, where a large airport can serve as the economic hub of an entire city region, much like how harbours or railway stations historically spurred the growth of surrounding towns.
Instead of being a place people pass through, the airport becomes the reason businesses want to be nearby. For example: manufacturers who need to ship parts fast, logistics firms, hotels for transit passengers, and offices for companies that do a lot of international business.
ACSA has listed “aerotropolises” as one of three priorities under its “Grow” strategic pillar, alongside air cargo and expanding its route network. This may signal that offices, logistics parks and hotels around its runways are back on the agenda, even if the original 2019 masterplan isn’t being revived as intended.
OR Tambo carries 48.8% of all passengers across ACSA’s nine-airport network. Together with Cape Town and King Shaka, it accounts for 90% of the group’s total passenger traffic. ACSA’s results flag that slot availability at OR Tambo — essentially, how many take-off and landing windows are left to sell to airlines — is becoming a constraint as international connectivity keeps expanding.
Network-wide, ACSA is forecasting passenger numbers of 42 million by 2029/30, up from over 20.5 million departing passengers this year, with international and regional traffic growing fastest.
A bit of scepticism here is also healthy. This is the organisation that shelved a hotel and a conference centre once when the numbers didn’t work and its capital delivery has lagged its targets more than once since. But the underlying case looks stronger than it did in 2019.
Passenger demand has recovered to pre-pandemic levels. Cargo is growing fast and has its own capital plan. Asset creation has moved from being a side effect of running an airport to a formal strategic objective with board-level backing. And Johannesburg houses one of the busiest, most capacity-constrained airports in the country.
The pressure makes the land around an airport look interesting again. We can now focus on a new version of what that could look like, while it competes with a R5.7bn cargo terminal, a formal aerotropolis strategy and an airport that’s running out of slots to sell.
Given everything sitting in ACSA’s results this month, this is something property developers — and the city of Johannesburg along with them — should watch closely.
