Birmingham Airport has recruited marketing agency Connect Group to manage its rebrand following a competitive tender process.

The rebrand will be unveiled in the spring of next year when the airport opens its new £13 million project to merge the two terminals into a single facility, creating new shops and restaurants and increasing its security area.

Connect has been tasked with repositioning the Birmingham Airport brand and to create a new corporate identity that reflects its current position in the marketplace as well as its future potential.

Jo Lloyd, the airport’s head of brand, said: “We have plenty of spare capacity – enough to take another nine million passengers today – and of the eight million people living within one hour’s drive, less than 40 per cent currently use Birmingham so we need to make ourselves more visible to this market.

“Furthermore, we’re the only UK airport with planning consent for a runway extension and the plans for a high speed rail link will reduce the rail journey time from London to just 38 minutes.

“We therefore see ourselves in a vital position as a strategic national asset, which can easily form part of the solution to the ‘Heathrow problem’, and as such we need to create positive awareness about Birmingham’s potential.”

The tender was awarded to Connect at the end of August and work will now focus on a new corporate identity including a new logo and associated marketing communications.

Rob Hampton, managing director of Connect, added: ”The future of Birmingham Airport is very exciting; it has a big role to play in delivering more flying for passengers to and from the UK.”