SriLankan Catering wins sixth environmental award

SriLankan Catering’s stunning success story in protecting the environment was rewarded yet again when President, Mahinda Rajapaksa, presented the company with a Gold Award at the first ever National Green Awards.

This was the sixth environmental accolade won in a little over one year by the company.

Nishantha Wickremasinghe, Chairman of SriLankan Airlines and SriLankan Catering, said: “SriLankan Catering has demonstrated to the world that a determined and well-planned conservation programme can achieve wonders within an amazingly short time. Just as importantly, we have proven that a ‘Green’ programme can also achieve significant cost savings for a company, and that the two are mutually compatible. It doesn’t cost money to be environmentally friendly.”

SriLankan Catering’s latest accolade was one of just six Golds from 27 awards presented at the National Green Awards on 23rd August at the BMICH, organised by the Central Environmental Authority. SriLankan Catering won in the category of Waste Management.

SriLankan Catering CEO Sarath Fernando said: “We launched our conservation programme from scratch in late 2009, achieved the ISO 14001:2004 standard for Best Environmental Practices within eight months, and won our first award four months later. Although we didn’t start our programme with the aim of winning awards, we’ve gone from strength to strength and the dedication of our entire staff of 718 to the cause of conservation has been recognized by these six awards.”

Only one week earlier, Prime Minister D.M. Jayaratne presented SriLankan Catering with the National Energy Efficiency Gold Award 2011 in the Large Scale State Sector for the second consecutive year at the Vidulka Energy Week & Exhibition organised by the Sri Lanka Sustainable Energy Authority at the BMICH.

This came hard on the heels of another accolade on World Environment Day when SriLankan Catering won the Green Jobs Award 2011 from Sri Lanka’s Ministry of Environment.

In February 2011 SriLankan Catering’s pioneering role in conservation was recognised internationally when it won two Mercury Awards from the International Travel Catering Association.

SriLankan Catering is one of an elite few airline caterers in the world to be certified to the ISO 14001:2004 standard for Best Environmental Practices. It also holds the certifications of ISO 9001:2008 for Quality Management Systems, ISO 22000:2005 for Food Safety Management Systems, and HACCP for Food Safety Assurance.

SriLankan Catering’s position as the exclusive caterer for airlines that operate to Bandaranaike International Airport was recently extended for a further decade by Airport & Aviation Services (Sri Lanka) Ltd. It produces an average of over 13,000 meals per day at its state of the art flight kitchen in Katunayake, which has ample capacity to supply the growing needs of customer airlines for many more years.

The company also supplies cuisine for all of BIA’s many restaurants and lounges, and last year diversified its operations by launching the Aero Clean industrial laundry facility in Katunayake and taking up the management of the 24-roomed Serenediva Transit Hotel at BIA.