REGIONAL REPORT
SPIRIANT expands competencies in Asia-Pacific
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PIRIANT, LSG Group’s equipment design and procurement subsidiary, has opened a new office in Hong Kong. The SPIRIANT Asia-Pacific team will focus on two major areas: Sourcing onboard equipment, ranging from technical items to comfort items from the highly diverse supplier base in the region. The office will also function as SPIRIANT’s worldwide competence center for amenity kits, including branded and non-branded amenity bags and the items contained within them. “This move ensures that our customers benefit from a onestop-shop solution provider, assisting them through the entire process of creative and innovative designs to high quality procurement and logistic services,” said Alexander Spahn, Managing Director SPIRIANT. The newly built office houses more than 40 employees with expertise in design, sales, procurement and logistics working to support SPIRIANT’s overall growth strategy while bringing about efficiency and speed in its daily business. Since the official launch of the SPIRIANT brand in 2013, the company has been successfully pursuing a global expansion strategy. Teams have so far been installed in Dubai, Istanbul, Sao Paulo and Hong Kong in addition to the company’s long-established home base near Frankfurt, Germany.
At the ribbon-cutting for the new SPIRIANT office in Hong Kong are, left to right, Alexander Spahn, Managing Director SPIRIANT, Angie Fung, who handles global amenity kits, H.K. Cheung, Regional Chief Operating Officer Asia/Pacific and Egon Linde head of regional procurement and logstics
Finnair partners with Hong Kong restaurant
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n February, Finnair announced its first foodservice partnership with an Asian restaurant the Nordic-themed FINDS located at the Luxe Manor Hotel in the Tsim Sha Tsui region of Kowloon in Hong Kong. FINDS stands for the five Scandinavian countries of Finland, Iceland, Norway, Denmark and Sweden. Since the restaurant opened in 2004 originally in the Lan Kwai Fong area of Hong Kong, it has received its share of media coverage and in March of 2010 relocated to the luxury boutique Luxe Manor Hotel. Since then, the restaurant specializes in entrée and appetizers featuring many well-known Scandinavian techniques including smoking, curing and pickling. Among its most recent awards was the Best European Restaurant of Restaurant Week 2015. Also last year Sorsa received the Summer Foodie Forks 2015 Chef of the Year. The restaurant is regularly featured in publications around Hong Kong. Chefs and staff at Cathay Pacific Catering Services have developed a selection of “Finnish Tradition” meals featuring down-home root vegetables such as porcinis, morels, carrots and potatoes. The vegetables are teamed with Norwegian salmon (flown in on Finnair cargo) and meatballs. Other enhancements include Scandinavian lingonberries, yellow beetroot and apples. A few of the menu items “The taste and look and Sorsa developed for texture was right there,” Finnair in the airline’s signature tableware said Head of Inflight Serfrom Marimekko
vice Maarit Keränen. “The catering company were professionals and you could see the excitement and they were learning something new about the Nordic kitchen.” For Finnair the collaboration with the restaurant and Chef Jaakko Sorsa was worked out in the kitchens of Cathay Pacific Catering with an initial meeting of the airline, staff at the unit and Sorsa. Spearheading the efforts was the caterer’s point of view was Cathay Pacific Catering Sous Chef Jessica Wong, who worked with the Sorsa to develop the menus. “With this cooperation, we want to honor our roots,” said Keränen, in the February announcement of the new work with FINDS. “And bring the best of Nordic flavors to the customers out of our Hong Kong route. Even if the majority of our customers flying from Hong Kong are connecting to Finnair’s broad network of around 70 destinations in Europe, they can enjoy a taste of Finland on board.”
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