Chr. Hansen is sharpening its strategic focus by establishing a new dedicated business unit towards the growing meat processing industry.

“We have a strong product portfolio of functional blends, natural colors and meat cultures to offer meat producers,“ says Christian Rolf Jacobsen, Vice President and head of the new business unit.

“Gathering all our activities in one organization we can sharpen our profile towards our customers, who will also benefit from the synergies and the consolidated expertise about applications and solutions.“

Meeting consumer trends

“We want to help our customers add value to their product. The pressure from the consumers demanding healthy, natural products with less artificial additives keeps increasing, and the producers want to offer products that meet that trend,“ explains Mr Jacobsen.

“With Chr. Hansen’s natural ingredients meat producers can enhance the visual appearance of the product, fight food bugs with bio-protective meat cultures and even provide a new positive taste experience. On top our customers are most likely able to reduce the e-numbers on the label which is a major trend,“ he adds.

Increasing market

Chr. Hansen is experiencing a growing interest from customers in key application areas such as fermented and emulsified meat as well as cooked ham.

The consumption of sausages is increasing, and the global processed meat industry is estimated to supply consumers with 188 million tons of products in 2010.

In Germany alone 82 million inhabitants eat more than 30 kg a year of different sausage types and similar meat products which makes the market potential quite substantial.

“We are seeing double-digit growth rates in areas such as convenience products, for instance sliced meat, healthy products with less fat, salt, additives, etc. but also an increasing demand for low-priced products for the economical consumer. These are some of the challenges facing today’s processed meat market and we can help them respond to those challenges,“ says Mr Jacobsen.

Working closely with the customer

Chr. Hansen’s new Meat Business Unit allows for a stronger technical support, either on the spot at the customer’s own facility of at the ingredient supplier’s Industry Technology Centers. Here the customer has the possibility to test Chr. Hansen’s solutions in a production-like environment supervised by its experts.

Recently Reinert, a leading German meat company, awarded Chr. Hansen its Luxx supplier award for quality and innovation.

“We use a combination of ingredients, meat processing and application know-how to develop the best solutions, sharing knowledge of trends and needs of the marketplace. In this way we can assist producers in developing and producing foods that satisfy the consumers’ desire for natural, tasty and safe products,“ explains Mr Jacobsen.

The production takes place at production facilities in Germany, Italy, Argentina and the USA.