Morocco’s Billion-Dollar Opportunity: The Untapped Aircraft Graveyard Industry

A stillborn project? The National Airports Office (ONDA) had launched an international call for tenders - open between April 15 and June 8, 2021 - to select a company that would be responsible, under a DBFOT contract, for the design, construction, financing and operation of a storage, deconstruction and recycling center for aircraft and aircraft parts. Since then, it is at a standstill. The name of no bidding company has been revealed to date. The project is still at a standstill, confirms the former president of GIMAS and CEO of CETIM Maroc Karim Cheichk. This blockage is linked to the availability of land, reveals Challenge, specifying that the successful company will have to temporarily (duration of 10 years renewable) benefit from the public domain, a bare land of a minimum area of 10 hectares (with the possibility of extending it to 54), within the customs zone of Oujda Angad airport (northeast of Morocco, near the Algerian border), for the exercise of its activity.

A problem that also affects certain countries. But Morocco is at the top in terms of the level of dissatisfaction compared to the reference countries, reveals a study by CMC, specifying that more than 40% of Moroccan companies consider access to land as a major or very severe obstacle against 9% in Romania and 7% in Turkey. "The decrease in the reserve of state-owned land in urban areas is considered a factor that reduces the supply of industrial land for investment," the document points out, adding that land represents an important factor in the attractiveness of the economy. "Several countries have made land an effective instrument to attract more foreign direct investment (FDI), including China," the same source notes. Land represents in Morocco 40 to 60% of the total investment cost of an economic project, compared to 2 to 10% in Europe, it is specified.

If Morocco does not accelerate the pace, it will not be able to take its share in the global aeronautical recycling market over the next ten years. According to projections by Boeing and Airbus, more than 12,000 aircraft will have to be taken out of service by 2035, which will constitute a continuous flow of activity, a generator of skilled jobs and foreign exchange. Aircraft cemetery projects are indeed lucrative businesses in the new era of aeronautics. The specific advantages are, among others, to reduce the cost of storing retired aircraft and to save parking fees at airports.