Sydney Airport CEO Scott Charlton: Spending spike to meet demand boom

Scott Charlton’s capex spend is about to jump from $500m to $700m to meet demand coming at the airport with new infrastructure.

Sydney Airport CEO Scott Charlton. Picture: Justin Lloyd.

CEO SURVEY 2025: FULL COVERAGE

Outlook

What excites you heading into 2025? Are you likely to increase, hold steady, or trim your investment spend?

We’re excited about growth. By 2050 we want to be an airport that welcomes 80 million passengers every year – that’s around double where we are today. We’re on an efficiency drive to make sure we are getting the most out of our existing infrastructure, but new infrastructure is going to have to do a lot of heavy lifting to meet the demand that’s coming at us. Our capital program will go from around $500m this year to more than $700m in 2025.

Reform

As we move into an election year, in your mind, what’s the single biggest lever that can/should be used to lift Australia’s competitiveness or productivity? This could be across any area from labour market, tax reform, training or other areas to encourage investment.

For us it would be a streamlined regulatory environment to boost productivity. Sydney Airport has just had the first changes in 27 years to the rules that governs how we operate, and the changes will ultimately benefit passengers and allow us to better manage disruptions. We’re appreciative that the government modernised it in a really crowded legislative environment, it shows that sensible change is possible. We need to keep up the momentum on reform because when Sydney Airport is operating efficiently, the benefits flow through in terms of job creation and economic growth.