ANAC Hands Menzies-Owned SPdH the Baggage and Ramp Licences at Lisbon, Porto and Faro, Two Years After the Tender Opened

The contest to run baggage and ramp services at Portugal's three busiest airports is over. On Friday 23 October the Autoridade Nacional da Aviação Civil (National Civil Aviation Authority, ANAC) announced that it had issued the ground handling licences tendered for Lisbon, Porto and Faro to SPdH, Serviços Portugueses de Handling, the company that used to trade as Groundforce and is now wholly owned by the British group Menzies Aviation.

ANAC said its technical departments had confirmed that SPdH met the legal and regulatory requirements, including those of Decreto-Lei n.º 275/99, the decree-law that governs ground handling, and that it had shown the technical capacity to provide these services to airlines at the three airports.

What the licences cover

The licences are for three categories of ground handling for third parties, that is, for airlines that do not handle their own aircraft:

• Baggage handling (category 3) at Lisbon, Porto and Faro;
• Freight and mail handling (category 4, sub-categories 4.1 and 4.2) at Lisbon and Porto only;
• Ramp handling (category 5, sub-categories 5.1 to 5.7) at Lisbon, Porto and Faro. This is the work on the apron around a parked aircraft.

These are restricted services. The 1999 decree-law lets the number of companies offering baggage, ramp, fuel and freight handling at airports of this size be limited, but not to fewer than two for each service at each airport. Where the number is limited, providers are picked by public tender and selected for a minimum of four and a maximum of seven years (articles 22 and 27). ANAC's statement does not say how long SPdH's new licences run or the date from which they apply.

Two years, two winners

ANAC published a chronology of the tender alongside its statement. It shows how a competition launched in October 2024 ended with the bidder that originally came second:

• October 2024 to February 2025: the tender notice, the applications and the qualification of candidates.
• February 2025 to January 2026: bids were submitted in May 2025, and a preliminary report in October 2025 was followed by a hearing for the bidders. In January 2026 ANAC's board selected the Union South grouping, formed by the services company Clece and South Europe Ground Services, part of the Iberia group.
• March to July 2026: the grouping lodged its licensing documents in March. In May ANAC said it intended to declare the selection lapsed, which we reported at the time. The board confirmed the lapse in July, as we reported in July, and asked the second-placed bidder, SPdH, to come forward.
• August to October 2026: SPdH's qualification documents were validated in August, it lodged its licensing documents in September, and ANAC's board decided to issue the licences in October.

ANAC said the whole procedure followed the principles of legality, transparency and impartiality and treated all bidders equally. It also said it will keep supervising how the licensed company meets its legal, regulatory and operational obligations.

What changes for passengers

Very little day to day. SPdH already handles aircraft at all three airports. It has been working under older licences that the Government has extended several times while the tender ran. The latest extension was approved by the Council of Ministers in September, when the licences were about to lapse on 25 October, and could run for up to two years, as we reported then. The new licences remove the need for further stopgaps.

Ownership has also settled this year. Menzies says it bought the remaining 49.9 percent of SPdH from TAP Air Portugal, after taking 50.1 percent in 2024, and that the deal was approved by the Tribunal de Contas (Court of Auditors). According to the same Menzies statement, SPdH handles more than 100,000 aircraft turnarounds a year at Lisbon, Porto, Faro, Funchal and Porto Santo and employs more than 3,500 people.

If a bag goes missing or is damaged, your claim is still with the airline you flew with, not with the handling company.

ANAC's statement does not say whether the excluded grouping has gone to court over the decision.