Southend Airport in Essex will be put up for sale after standing empty over the winter.
Esken, the listed company spun out of the Eddie Stobart trucking business, said it planned to sell the site, along with its woodchip incinerating biomass energy supply business and property assets.
It hopes to raise at least £36m from the sales, which will be used to pay down the company’s £263m net debt.
Esken had planned to create a sixth London passenger airport at Southend, dealing with 10m passengers a year. This winter the airport scheduled no passenger flights, with just 18 flights a week on four routes being flown by easyJet over the summer. Carriers including Wizz Air and Ryanair pulled out of Southend during the pandemic.
A buyer for the airport could be Carlyle, the US private equity firm, which has previously acquired a stake in it.
