KOTA KINABALU: Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS) has signed an agreement with the region’s biggest airline catering company for inflight research and development collaboration.
The university yesterday inked a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Brahim’s Airline Catering, the company that serves 36 other airlines apart from Malaysia Airlines (MAS) and caters for roughly 95 per cent of the planes taking off from Kuala Lumpur International Airport.
Vice-chancellor Professor Datuk Dr Harun Abdullah said BAC had vast experience in the industry, making it an ideal partner for UMS in food and nutrition science.
He said that apart from product development and R&D activities, the agreement would include providing industrial training to UMS students.
“BAC is a highly suitable institution to help provide exposure to our students on the real working environment in the food industry,” he said at the signing ceremony at the university.
Harun said it was hoped that products to be jointly developed by UMS and BAC would be included in the menus for domestic and international flights.
He said cooperation with BAC started in 2013 when the company took a group of students from the faculty of Food and Nutrition Science to undergo a six-month industrial training at their facilities.
He expressed hope that the MoU would open up possibilities for more collaborations, in academic aspects and beyond.
Meanwhile, BAC chief executive officer Ainul Hasnizam Abu Hassan said the collaboration with UMS represented not only the company’s passion in supporting academic advancement in the food industry but also contributed towards fulfilling its corporate social responsibility, particularly in educational development.
The MoU, he added, was a platform for BAC to contribute towards producing quality human capital for the airline catering industry and the country’s food industry in general.