Danish Crown Fleisch, which slaughters 3.5 million head a year, is the fourth-largest slaughterhouse in Germany; Steen Sønnichsen is CEO of the company.
“We are pleased the agreement has now been finalized, and we look forward to getting to know the company in more detail in the coming months,” Sønnichsen said. “We will now be taking an extremely close look at things in detail to identify anything which may need changing to suit Danish Crown’s operations.”
Danish Crown Fleisch is located in Essen, (Oldenburg), which is close to some of Danish Crown’s other departments in northern Germany. The company also has slaughterhouses in Cappeln near Oldenburg.
For many years this company has recorded strong growth in supplying the retail trade, processing industry and export markets. Only German pigs are slaughtered at the two slaughterhouses, and pig deliveries are based on contracts, which Danish Crown has since taken over.
In other news, Danish Crown is receiving more pigs for slaughter from Danish farmers. As a result, the company plans to soon hire 150 new employees at slaughterhouses and deboning facilities throughout Denmark. Last summer, Danish Crown started reaping the benefits of DC Future with about 1 million more pigs being delivered for slaughter, which helped safeguard just more than 400 Danish jobs.
This positive trend is continuing, and Danish Crown has recently seen an influx of new cooperative owners, among other things, thanks to the competitive prices offered by the group.
“We are currently seeing an increase in demand from several of our export markets, including Korea. This confirms that Danish Crown is maintaining its position as a competitive slaughterhouse business,” said Kjeld Johannesen, Danish Crown CEO.
Higher feed prices are resulting in more pig producers wanting to reduce the slaughter weight. At present, this is adding to pressure on the facilities. Many suppliers are still waiting to have their pigs collected for slaughter due to the recent Christmas and New Year bank holidays – and also due to bad road conditions caused by wintry weather.
“Creating the new jobs is a sign we are doing our utmost to catch up on the backlog of pigs awaiting slaughter,” says Vagner Bøge, deputy chief executive of DC Owner Relations.
