Flying FORWARD

HIRANJAN ALOYSIUS HAS HAD TO DELAY THE CELEBRATION OF HIS BILLION-DOLLAR TARGET. INSTEAD, THE CEO OF AIRLINE CATERING COMPANY DNATA CATERING IS DOING WHATEVER IT TAKES TO KEEP THE BUSINESS RUNNING.

- WENDY KAY

Life in January was looking pretty sweet for Hiranjan Aloysius. The CEO of dnata catering, fondly referred to as ‘H’ throughout the airline catering industry, was sitting in his Gold Coast office reflecting over yet another spectacular year of business. Just months before, dnata catering, Australia’s largest inflight catering company serving more than 40 airlines at nine Australian airports, had celebrated its first anniversary since acquiring Qantas subsidiaries, Q Catering and ready-made meals specialists, snapfresh.

Despite enormous challenges, the merge proved extraordinarily successful, doubling employee numbers to 4,000 and catapulting revenue. They were exceptional figures, considering the company was nearing bankruptcy when Hiranjan joined it 15 years ago. He was confident 2020 would be the year dnata catering hit the billion-dollar mark. “I started the new decade very focused on extracting maximum synergies from the acquisition and leveraging it to grow the revenue to that billion-dollar target,” Hiranjan remembers.

“We’d set up a new leadership team, focused on integrating the two largest airline caterers in the country – both of equal size but with very different cultures and operating methods. We had a great start to the integration journey over the 18 months pre-COVID-19. Through a lot of hard work and challenging every assumption, we completed a large part of the integration in record time, unlocked synergies, had minimal disruption to the customer base and maintained our excellent performance and safety record. We were ready to move forward in a big way. Then COVID-19 hit and within two months, we lost about 90 per cent of our business. To be honest, it was incredibly difficult.”