It will be closing more of its slaughterhouses in Denmark. This will take up to 18 months, during which time the co-operative will attempting to build sufficient slaughtering capacity in Germany.

Danish Crown continues to be in crisis because increasingly producers are sending their pigs to Germany, where they get a better price.

Labour costs are too high in Denmark to run slaughterhouses competitively, according to Henning Otte Hansen, senior advisor at the Food Economic Institute of University of Copenhagen.

He sees jobs in the slaughtering sector increasingly moving to Germany, East Europe and China.

The Danish pig industry is now in a state of flux and the next two years will bring immense challenges to Danish Crown and its producers in Denmark.