AUSTRALIA. The Mercurius Group, a Sydney-based airport and infrastructure commercial revenue advisory group, has been appointed to the architectural team consisting of London-based Zaha Hadid Architects and Cox Architecture in Sydney tasked with terminal precinct design for Western Sydney Airport.
The winning consortium was selected from over 40 candidates for the terminal precinct design. Western Sydney Airport will open in 2026, initially catering for up to 10 million passengers per year.
The Mercurius Group’s role in the design team is to provide the commercial analytics that will determine the amount of duty free, specialty retail and food & beverage space in the new terminal. Mercurius will also provide input into the overall layout of the commercial precincts.
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“A transformational infrastructure project”
Construction of Western Sydney International (Nancy-Bird Walton) Airport is underway and on track to begin operations in 2026. It will be a full-service airport, operating curfew-free and delivering international, domestic and freight services. The Australian government describes the airport as “a transformational infrastructure project” that will generate economic activity, provide employment opportunities closer to home for people in the Western Sydney region, and meet Sydney’s growing aviation needs. The federal government is investing up to A$5.3 billion (US$4 billion) in equity to deliver the airport through a government-owned company called Western Sydney Airport. The airport is expected to support almost 28,000 direct and indirect jobs by 2031, five years after the airport opens. |
“We will use our extensive database of benchmarks from other airports in Australia and airports worldwide to help us plan the retail and commercial,” said Managing Director Ivo Favotto.
“The opportunity to plan the retail and commercial programme for a greenfield airport doesn’t come along very often – so we see this as a great opportunity to make sure that Western Sydney Airport has the best commercial programme of any airport in Australia and at the same time, ensure that the programme reflects the best of what Western Sydney has to offer.
“As a Sydney-based company, we are honoured to play our part in the development of this terminal in our own backyard. We are grateful to the Cox/Zaha Hadid design team for including us in their consortium. The Mercurius Group has worked with the Cox team – one of Australia’s premier architectural firms – on a number of previous airport terminal projects both in Australia and overseas and we look forward to working with them once again as well as working for the first time with the renowned design team at Zaha Hadid.
“The Mercurius Group will be also be working with London-based retail architects Chapman Taylor to ensure that the commercial programme reflects both the best of Australia and Western Sydney as well as the best from the rest of the world.”