2024 was a fantastic year for VINCI Concessions. It was a record year in terms of activity for all our subsidiaries. Airport traffic surpassed its previous record set in 2019, reaching 318 million passengers (up 3.7% on 2019, up 8.5% on 2023). Highway traffic increased, particularly in Europe and North America. As for railways, the South Europe Atlantic high-speed line (SEA HSL) in France carried 22 million passengers during the year. And let’s not forget that the Stade de France hosted an incredible Olympic and Paralympic Games! So the year marked a post-Covid return to normal for our activities and growing demand for mobility. The pandemic confirmed the resilience of our model and its overall performance. We have emerged from it more committed than ever. Our objective remains unchanged: to enhance mobility all over the world in a sustainable way. Mobility is a key driver of social and economic dynamics. 2024 was also a record year in terms of financial performance, marked by numerous successes and investments. Our network includes around 100 infrastructure assets, which we operate to the highest standards in terms of operational and service quality, connectivity, safety and environmental ambition. We manage our concessions with the aim of achieving the highest levels of performance. That’s why our clients trust us and why we can, for instance, proudly celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Rio-Antirrio bridge concession in Greece and the 30-year extension to our airport concession contract in the Dominican Republic. It’s also what motivated us to increase our stake in Lisea, the company that holds the concession for the high-speed line between Tours and Bordeaux – a low-carbon mobility asset. Managing the infrastructure entrusted to us also involves investing in, modernising and enhancing it. For instance, in Japan, the international terminal at Kansai airport will soon welcome visitors arriving from all over the world for World Expo 2025 in Osaka, in expanded and revisited spaces, providing a customer experience that meets the highest standards.
This change brings greater clarity and efficiency to the VINCI Group’s organisational structure, benefitting concessions, a model that has never been as relevant as it is today. This was also underlined in 2024 in a report by the think tank Terra Nova, which highlighted concessions as an effective response to the modern-day challenges of public funding and the energy transition. The public-private partnership and concession model enables long-term investments in the public interest all over the world, without putting a strain on public finances, by leveraging companies’ expertise and investment capacity.
