Merpati to sell its maintenance facility later this year

Jakarta (ANTARA News) - State-owned airline company PT Merpati Nusantara Airlines (MNA) planned to sell its stake in the Merpati Maintenace Facility (MMF), one of the company`s strategic business units, later this year.

"We are not yet sure how much of the stake in MMF that we plan to sell. The sales proceed will be returned to the MMF. MNA will focus on its core business only," MNA Corporate Secretary Irvan Harijanto told the press here on Thursday.

The MMF became a subsidary of MNA after a spin-off sometime ago.

He said that the strategic value of the spin-off was yet to be known as it was still being assessed. The percentage of the stake that would be sold would be set after its strategic value had been issued.

Irvan said that the ownership portion that would be sold was unlikely to reach 50 percent because MNA wanted to remain the MMF`s major stake holder.

"Merpati will continue to need maintenance facilties, especially that more than 60 pecent of airplanes the MMF is handling belong to Merpati, while the remaining 40 percent belonged to other airlines," he added.

He said that with the spin-off and with a portion of its shares onwed by other parties, it was expected that the MMF would be able to handle not only small planes but the larger ones as well such those handled by the Garuda Maintenance Facility (GMF).

The MMF has been taking care of the maintenance of aircraft of many different types, like DHC-6 Twin Otter, Fokker F-27, F-28, F-100 and Boeing 737, series 200, 300 and 400.

The MMF`s customers care not only domestic airlines but foreign airline companies as well like those from Thailand, Malaysia and New Zealand, Irvan said.

Merpati is now operating 30 airplanes, 15 of which are jets and 15 others turbo-props. Up to the first semester of 2007, the company has earned Rp755.3 billion.