Brahim Trying Other Airlines Catering Contracts

Flight meals provider, Brahim’s Airline Catering section (BAC), is eyeing to cater meals onboard Malindo Air, Qatar Airways and Royal Brunei Airlines by the end of 2014.

The move is part of the company’s effort to reduce its dependency on Malaysia Airlines which currently contributed over 75% of its revenue.

BAC, a unit of Brahim’s Holdings Bhd, currently serves 35 international airlines and clients included Malaysia Airlines and AirAsia X, said executive chairman of Brahim’s Ibrahim Ahmad Badawi.

“We have talked and presented menus to them. So, we are now finalising the price,” he said during a media visit to BAC’ kitchen here today.

“Actually, we have been looking at how we can mitigate less volume coming from the national carrier for quite a while now,” he said, adding that Brahim’s signed up Lufthansa early this year.

BAC will also intensity efforts to reduce dependency on flight catering business in the country by setting up halal flight kitchen overseas on the back of strong demand for halal foods especially in non-Muslim countries, he said.

“There are quite a number of interested parties beside Japan, who want to have halal flight kitchen to serve Muslim-owned airlines like Qatar Airways, Emirates Airline and Etihad Airways.

“We have been talking to them on how we can collaborate,” he said.

In January, the company inked an agreement with ANA Holdings Inc (ANA) to produce halal Japanese cuisine for in-flight catering in Japan, which paved the way for a joint venture halal flight kitchen in Narita and Haneda airports in Tokyo.

“We are also looking at non-airline related business like selling Brahim’s products and open more restaurants in countries like Japan, which is currently attracting more Middle East tourists to the country,” Ibrahim said.

On revenue outlook for the second half, he said: “Surely there will be an impact due to Malaysia Airlines route rationalisation.

“Until today we are still not sure if MAS will maintain the long-haul destinations to Europe and so on or depend on one world to serve customers to other parts of the world.

“There are talks saying that it might concentrate in the region.”