Capital Catering, Part of ADNEC Group

Few caterers can point to a global first, but Capital Catering is far from average. The UAE-based operator orchestrated F&B for ICCA Congress 2025, leading it to become the first international event to achieve The PLEDGE on Food Waste's Zero Food Waste to Landfill Event Standard – a feat the judges described as "an exceptional accomplishment". Despite the prestigious milestone, this was not a one-off, but the mark of a business of formidable scale, spanning more than 100 locations, 6,800 employees and delivering 45 million meals a year, with the infrastructure to support events from Formula 1 and ADIPEC, remote-site operations, and even airline and hospital services.

However, what stands out is how sustainability has been engineered into the machinery of this mass catering. Capital Catering tracks carbon, tightens energy and water efficiency, composts food waste, recycles used cooking oil into biodiesel and has eliminated significant volumes of waste through segregation and recovery systems. Over the past year alone, it diverted 10.46 tonnes of food waste from landfill, processed 153,233 litres of cooking oil into biodiesel, improved electricity efficiency by 15% against 2023, cut water use per meal by 19% and managed more than 2.2 million kg of recyclable waste. Its Planet Mark certification adds third-party weight to those claims, recording an impressive 22.1% absolute carbon reduction.

ICCA Congress 2025 was the perfect demonstration of this attention to detail at scale: 1,115kg of food was diverted from landfill, of which 371kg was through smarter planning, and 928 meals were redistributed through the UAE food waste initiative ne'ma. Plus, more than 200 staff were trained to ensure a seamless process. Judges praised the ambition of the business to embed sustainability into operations from the start, rather than a problem-solving task after the event, with one noting this is "exactly the progress the industry needs to see more of".