Again, a new player on Danish pork market

The new enterprise was started up by producers that previously supplied to market leader Danish Crown, the Dutch agricultural newspaper Agrarisch Dagblad reports. Danish agricultural minister Eva Kjer Hansen performed the official opening on Monday.

Capacity
The slaughterhouse has a capacity of 100,000 pigs a year, for predominantly slaughtering sows. The company processes animals from own production sites but will also deal with animals from elsewhere.

Processing sows, the founders Hans and Niels Jørgen Haahr hope to reply to the recent calls to stop long-lasting livestock transports to foreign countries.

Danish Crown, which has had a monopoly position in Denmark for a long time, has seen more competitors enter the Danish market recently, as the German meat processor Tönnies set up a plant in Brørup, and also Jutland Meat and Danish Meat Company were established.

Trading company
In addition, a new trading company was set up in February: Danpork. That last one was also an initiative, launched by former Danish Crown employees, unhappy with the company's meat prices. Danpork considers doing processing itself too and hopes to achieve about 10% market share in the future.

Danish Crown acknowledges the increased competition, against a background of a shrinking market. The total pig herd in Denmark has gone down by about 10% in the last decade. Danish Crown will close down one and possibly even two plants this year.

Related websites:
• Danish Crown
• Tönnies
• Jutland Meat
• Danish Meat Company 
• Moesgaard Meat
• Danpork (in Danish)
• Agrarisch Dagblad (in Dutch)

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