In a statement, the airline informs that "the deadline for submitting proposals for the sale of an indivisible lot of 357,000 shares, representing 51% of the share capital of Cateringpor – Catering de Portugal, S.A.", is currently underway.

The decision was taken by resolution of the board of directors on December 23, 2025, and the procedure also includes, at a later stage, "the definition of the contractual conditions for the provision of catering services by Cateringpor, from the moment the aforementioned sale of shares is completed".

According to TAP, the "base price of the procedure that the acquirer will pay to the public entity selling the assets is €9,567,145.00", with bidders subject to "minimum requirements of technical and financial capacity".

The resulting value from the sale will revert to the State, as the Government had announced.

Among these requirements, the company says that interested parties "must have experience in the catering sector for at least five years, and in operating at airports of equal or higher category than Humberto Delgado Airport", in Lisbon, according to the statement issued on December 30, 2025.

According to the announcement of the procedure, published on the same day in the Diário da República (Official Gazette), the sale of the shareholding is executed instantly, while the catering services contract to be signed with TAP will have a duration of five years and will not be renewable.

The notice also specifies that the contract is not divided into lots and that bidders are required to provide a provisional guarantee of R$ 150,000, and the proposals must remain valid for a period of 180 days.

The proposals must be submitted "until 11:59 pm on the 45th day from the date of publication of the bidding notice in the Official Gazette," adds the airline's statement. In other words, considering the standard for public tenders where deadlines are counted in consecutive days, they must be submitted by February 13th.

The launch of the tender comes after the European Commission confirmed to Lusa the extension of the deadline for the sale of TAP's 51% stake in Cateringpor and its 49.9% stake in SPdH, formerly Groundforce, initially scheduled for the end of 2025.

The restructuring plan agreed between Portugal and Brussels in 2021 foresaw the sale of 51% of Cateringpor as part of the offsets associated with the state support granted to the airline during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Ministry of Infrastructure had already stated to Lusa that the Government is "in coordination with the European Commission on this issue," recalling statements by Minister Miguel Pinto Luz on December 19, who admitted that the initially planned schedule would not be "fully met."

On that same date, the minister explained that the government decided to exclude CateringPor and SPdH from the scope of TAP's privatization list, also removing the so-called 'TAP stronghold,' referring to real estate assets. He added that the proceeds from these sales will revert to the State "according to the model defined by the Government."