Singapore Airlines' unit offers kitchen for the skies
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.