Knife-edge decisions

Stuart Forster debates the post-covid supply chain challenges and emerging trends of the airline cutlery sector with one industry stalwart

Airline cutlery could be considered an unsung industry essential HOW DOES ITS FORTUNES REFLECT THOSE BEING FACED BY THE WIDER ONBOARD HOSPITALITY SECTOR

HOW IS THE CUTLERY SECTOR?

The pandemic left us with a supply chain crisis and rises in raw material costs and labour pricing. First, we had to get raw materials and then find the people we needed. You need a lot of labour for the production of cutlery as a lot is done by hand. The supply chain crisis meant containers got lost, weren’t available or cost up to 10 times more than normal. That was extremely frustrating. Shipping lines just dropped our container ‘somewhere’ and did not communicate – this had a serious effect on our clients. We managed to get production under control as we use several factories spread through Asia, so towards the end of 2022 things began to pick up.

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HE WHAT IS THE CURRENT CHALLENGE?

It is extremely difficult to get the right people. We need somebody who wants to do the job, someone who can see the wood through all the trees. Someone with persistence and patience. They also need to be able to work in a team. Finding somebody with all those characteristics is difficult. Airline business is longterm. A new design can take a year to 18 months to complete, unlike a hotel restaurant where they may want something completely new by Friday!

HE ARE SUSTAINABILITY CONCERNS IMPACTING CHOICES OF MATERIALS?

Luckily, in our case, stainless steel is 100% recyclable. We do not make a big thing about being sustainable or green but we have developed special, ultra-lightweight cutlery to compete with single-use plastic cutlery. People are now using wood, banana leaves and coconut leaves. But why use exotic raw materials? You can recycle stainless steel and there are no chemicals added in the production process. So, it’s a 100% natural product.

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IN WHAT WAYS DOES THE TREND TOWARD SUSTAINABILITY IMPACT CUTLERY CHOICES?

We see a trend towards a lighter product and have developed a hollow-handle type of cutlery. We’ll have our lightweight cutlery at WTCE in Hamburg. It’s the lightest set on the market in the world and just 0.5 millimetres thick. We developed it to compete with single-use plastics. Ironically some people now say: ‘We think it’s too light, can you make it thicker?!’

HE HOW MANY TIMES CAN STAINLESS STEEL CUTLERY BE REUSED?

From a technical point of view, it goes on for a lifetime. Airlines use their cutlery anywhere from 10 and 1,000 times over depending on how much it’s scratched, the quality of the steel used in production, the thickness and the design. We have done testing on this but, practically, it is impossible to figure out how many rotations a range can do exactly. In the short term, steel is more expensive to buy and you have to take the cost of washing and repacking into account, but in the long term stainless steel cutlery onboard will always be cheaper than single-use plastics.

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WHAT ARE THE CUTLERY SECTOR’S MOST SIGNIFICANT TRENDS?

Everybody wants custom-made things. They do not want to use anything straight from the brochure. If they have something classical in terms of plates and glasses, they want to have a matching design. And people want to embed their logo in the product so the brand is more present. Clients mix and match our designs or show us their chinaware and ask us to find the perfect match – that is one of the most fun parts of the job. The bottom line is, we have full flexibility to change designs and specifications any way they want. Imagination from buyers helps us to work and produce a great product. Currently, many are just focused on getting back into business rather than finding something totally new. •