dnata partners with local Australian suppliers to craft home-grown, delicious airline meals

dnata, a leading global air and travel services provider, extensively uses local suppliers to provide ingredients for the over 175,000 meals it produces per day throughout Australia.

Hiranjan Aloysius, CEO of dnata Catering & Retail Australia, said: “As Australia’s leading inflight caterer, we are committed to contributing to the local economy and communities across our operations. We pride ourselves in our extensive work with local suppliers, aiding their achievements, while ensuring our produce is locally sourced and super fresh. This ensures that our airline customers receive best-in-class, international quality cuisine with the least possible environmental footprint.”

dnata delivers excellent dining experiences for millions of passengers on board over 45 airline customers’ international and domestic flights. Produce supplied to dnata Catering is sourced from 120 producers across Australia, providing 329 tonnes of red meat, 117 tonnes of sea food, plus 2,700 tonnes of fruit and vegetables annually. To create sumptuous dishes, dnata’s chefs also use over one million litres of milk and 134 tonnes of cheese from local markets. A total of 274 tonnes of ice cream is used annually to create a variety of delicious desserts.

dnata’s extensive operations throughout Australia, including its state-of-the-art facility in Melbourne, use the finest ingredients from the closest possible source, contributing to the success of local suppliers. Vegetables such as radishes, herbs, spring onions, Dutch carrots, cabbages, and beetroot are locally grown in each location. This minimises the environmental impact from long haul logistics and handling, providing the freshest produce possible to dnata Catering and its airline customers.

For example, a dish created by dnata’s Melbourne catering team for a global airline’s First and Business class passengers, consists of beef tenderloin sourced locally from Victoria, steamed mange tout from Mildura, Victoria, crushed potatoes from Virginia, South Australia, and local Victoria-grown parsley.

dnata’s Australian-produced meals are also served on international flights into the country. Several airlines with tight turnaround schedules prefer to transport their inflight meals and snacks for both legs of a flight, ensuring passengers receive dnata’s consistent quality cuisine.

Including its newest catering centre at Sunshine Coast Airport (MCY), dnata Catering now operates 15 facilities with a team of over 3,000 highly trained professionals, providing tailor-made inflight catering and retail services at 10 airports across Australia.

dnata is a leading global air and travel services provider. Established in 1959, the company offers quality and safe ground handling, cargo, travel, catering and retail services in over 30 countries across six continents. In the financial year 2022-23, dnata’s customer-oriented teams handled over 710,000 aircraft turns, moved over 2.7 million tonnes of cargo, uplifted 111.4 million meals, and recorded a total transaction value (TTV) of travel services of US$ 1.9 billion.

All data as of financial year 2022-23, ending 31 March 2023