Can Arabí will not be able to serve school catering again until June 2027

PalmaThe Can Arabí central kitchen, located in Binissalem, will remain closed until at least June 2027. This was announced this Wednesday by the Minister of Health, Manuela García, during her appearance before the Health Commission of the Parliament, in which she justified the extension of the precautionary suspension of activity due to repeated deficiencies detected in the facilities. As she explained, the company has accumulated ten complaints since 2021 and eight sanctioning proceedings.

García has attributed the situation to "continuous malpractice" and an "absence of food culture" on the part of the company. The precautionary suspension was decreed in June 2026, after Food Safety technicians detected serious hygiene deficiencies and a high risk to public health during an inspection at the Binissalem facilities. The measure directly affects the supply of food to 2,240 students in 35 schools in Mallorca.

The Health Department's decision came when there were only nine days left to finish the school year and forced the Ministry of Education to activate an emergency plan to reorganize nearly 2,000 daily meals that had been prepared and distributed by Can Arabí until then. The company managed 44 school canteens in the Balearic Islands, although not all of them depended on the closed central kitchen, as some centers had their own kitchen.

The closure was not the result of a single incident. As reported by ARA Balears, the central kitchen had accumulated a history of inspections, warnings, files, and sanctions due to deficiencies related to hygiene, temperature control, food preparation and cleaning, staff training, and cross-contamination prevention. The last inspection detected non-compliance in the preparation, handling, and transport of food. In addition to the health irregularities, sources familiar with the operation of the facilities pointed out a structural problem: the capacity of the kitchen. Technicians considered that the dimensions of the facilities were not adequate to handle the volume of meals that the company was preparing. Can Arabí had incorporated devices to control the temperature of the food, but inspectors considered that these measures did not resolve the fundamental shortcomings.

Outside of public school canteens

The suspension of activity also had consequences for the company's continuity within the public school canteen system. At the beginning of September, ARA Balears reported that Can Arabí had been excluded from the new service award contracts. Education confirmed that the suspension as an operator agreed upon by Health had allowed for restricting its participation in the new tenders. In this way, the company lost the 44 centers it had managed the previous school year.

However, Can Arabí tried to return to the public service this school year under another business name. As this newspaper published in September, the company presented itself to the new contracting procedures with a different name and a responsible declaration in which it claimed that it met the conditions required by Education. An anonymous phone call alerted the department to the link with Can Arabí and, after verifying it, the Administration excluded this candidacy. ARA Balears had also documented that some centers had expressed complaints about the operation of the service before the closure. This is the case of the CEIP Duran Estrany of Llubí, whose canteen committee had prepared a report indicating that various contractual commitments had not been fulfilled, such as the use of local and organic products and the implementation of a canteen management application. The center ended up terminating the contract with Can Arabí before it expired.