Singapore Airlines' unit offers kitchen for the skies

By Tantri Yuliandini

SINGAPORE (JP): Imagine yourself walking between rows and rows of vegetables and fruit kept fresh at a temperature of minus 20 degrees Celsius, your fingers starting to grow numb from the cold.

Imagine yourself watching hundreds of thousands of plastic and china platters being mechanically sprayed, soaped, and dried on hundreds of miles of conveyor belts.

And imagine yourself breathing the sweet smell of millions of loaves of freshly baked bread taken straight from the oven; you could be at one of the catering centers owned by Singapore Airport Terminal Services (SATS) Catering Pte Ltd. at Singapore's Changi airport.

The catering centers, called "SATS Inflight Catering Centre" (SICC), are the sources of food for air travelers in hundreds of airplanes that ply the Singapore skies each day.

Responsible for the catering needs of more than 40 airlines, the company's major clients include Singapore Airlines, Qantas, and Cathay Pacific.

Indonesian privately owned airline PT Awair International was one of the clients of the catering facility, but it suspended the contract after it stopped flying the route.

There are two catering centers, owned by publicly listed SATS Catering, a subsidiary of Singapore Airlines, and these are SICC 1 and SICC 2, account manager David Joseph K. said.

The S$172 million (about US$95.5 million) SICC 2, which was built to focus on servicing orders from foreign airlines, could provide as many as 30,000 meals a day, he told a group of Indonesian journalists, who were invited to tour the facility recently.

The SICC 1 facility could provide 45,000 meals a day.

David said that the company also owns seven joint venture companies around the world to provide more localized services, including in Osaka, Japan; Beijing, China; Taipei, Taiwan; Madras, India; Macau; Male, the Maldives; and Manila, the Philippines.

Donning white kimonos and caps, we began our tour of the 40,000 square meter facility with a visit to the general stores floor of SATS Inflight Catering Centre 2 (SICC 2), where dry goods and perishables are stored in freezers and chillers.

Stepping inside one of the freezers was no mean feat. The temperature was set at minus 20 degrees Celsius and our teeth started chattering even as we stepped onto the threshold.

"This is a good way to test whether or not you're ready for a European winter!" was a wisecrack from one senior journalist.

Our dedicated tour guide of the facility, assistant manager for standards and procedures Fadzil Kader, said that every day it receives hundreds of tons of perishable goods straight from the producer countries.

Each types of goods were stored in a separate container and marked with barcodes which, when decoded, stated what types of product the container held, the quantity, and the time of storage.

Fadzil said the goods were kept for a maximum of seven days.

The cold was replaced by a welcoming warmth as we entered the equipment processing floor, where dirty tray carts and dishes were being cleaned.

Dozens of women work on this floor, their nimble fingers mechanically separating the trash from the cutlery, putting it either in bins (the trash) or the conveyor belt (the cutlery).

"Each person has his own job; one to throw away the rubbish, one to pick up the cutlery, one to separate the cups, etc," Fadzil explained.

The conveyor belt takes the dishes and cutlery to be sprayed with water at a temperature of more than 75 degrees Celsius and then to be soaped, rinsed, and dried, everything done by machine.

At the other end of the belt, more women check and double- check the cleanliness of the items.

"They have to be very careful, because if the dishes from this point were still dirty, a fine would be subtracted from their pay," Fadzil said.

Also on this floor, tray carts were restocked with dry goods such as cans of coke, milk, and butter.

Moving on to the third floor of the facility, we came to the food production center.

Upon entering, we were exposed to an air blast to clean away loose hair and dirt from our clothes.

Six at a time, we took turns in the air blast chamber, a rectangular room with many small air spouts protruding from the walls.

What with a ticklish sensation from the blast, and the alien surroundings, it felt like a scene from Star Trek.

On this floor were kitchens of immense size -- a cold kitchen, continental kitchen, Chinese kitchen, halal kitchen (kitchen for food that Muslims can eat), Indian kitchen, pastry kitchen -- it's a haven for those who love to cook.

A sous chef from Surabaya, East Java, Bambang Sutikno, is in charge of the halal kitchen.

He said that he was in charge to ensure the halal quality of the food in his kitchen and that his specialties were rendang (Padang-style spiced beef), Balinese style grilled chicken, and fried noodles.

The company, with its 12 international chefs, could provide between 10,000 to 15,000 types of food combinations to suit any palate, whether European or Asian, Fadzil said.

The chefs prepare samples of each dish, including how they are to be presented on the plastic or china dishes, and the samples are then distributed and copied in the appropriate kitchens.

Choice of menu depends entirely on the airline; some prefer to design their own menus, while others make a choice of what SATS Catering has to offer, Fadzil said.

"Larger airlines prefer to design their own menus, while smaller airlines sometimes need our help with their menu," he said.

Two hours before the airplane's scheduled flight, the food is put inside crated trays and stowed away in the hold of the respective airplanes.