On May the 10th, our class received the CEO of LSG Sky Chefs, Mr.
Gareth Lycett (United-Kingdom).
LSG Sky Chefs is a German company which provides different
on-board services for airlines such as catering, in-flight equipments (screen
and “smart” monitors) and also some airport services. Also, this company is a
joint venture signed in 1993 between LSG founded by Lufthansa in 1966 and Sky
Chefs founded by American Airlines in 1942. In 2016, LSG Groups Brand/Lufthansa
acquired the totality of LSG Sky Chefs. Since the two companies merged to
create a bigger company, they decided to expand their activity in the whole
world. For example, they entered the Russian market in 1996 and arrived in
China, India and South Korea in 2001. Nowadays, they have 29% of the on-board
services market and hire around 35 000 employees in 55 countries. The company
serve more than 300 customers such as major airlines in the world like Korean
Air, Air France, Asiana Airlines or Emirates and, also, some other companies,
such as 7/Eleven or Starbucks.
LSG holds three companies in Korea: Spiriant Korea, Ekarm Food
Service and Sky Chefs. This last one is more than 95% of the annual income of
the company and they provide food and beverages (full catering), duty free
services, entertainments, newspapers for airlines. They are based in Incheon
International Airport since 2003 and the company increased his annual income of
600% between 2003 and 2016 to reach 200 billions Won per year. Also, they
signed another joint venture with Asiana which made around 65% of their
business in Incheon Airport. They hire around 1000 employees which are
preparing catering for 180 flights per day which means 39 000 meals per day.
At the end of his presentation, Mr. Lycett explained us what the
specificities of working in a foreign countries and, especially, in Korea. Due
to his experience, his advices were really precious and worthy. In fact, he
works for this company since 1990 and since he entered the company, he was able
to work in a few countries like Russia, Japan or South Korea. Consequently, he
told us that the main point for a foreigner who would like to work abroad is to
respect the image given by foreigners to his country. For example, Korean think
that British people are gentleman, calm and polite; so Mr. Lycett respected
this ideas, especially because he is the CEO of the company and he need to be a
good manager with people from another nationality and be able to understand
their culture. He, also, presented the Lewis model which say that every
countries workers have a specificities: Korea is well known to be a country
with reactiv workers, for example. But, he also added that Korean economy
is currently quite weak, suffering of the crisis; which make Korean workers to
work really hard. Nevertheless, according to him, South Korea is full of
opportunities for foreigners and it’s really interesting to work there. And, we
would need to think strategically at our career, due to a labour market in lack
of new jobs. That’s why, working abroad seems to be a nice opportunity if we
have experience and skills in this field.
We would like to thanks Mr. Lycett to come in our class to present
his company and to give us precious advices for our future career.
