Denmark's Love Affair with Cooperation Turns Sour

DENMARK - In a rare bid to find enough pigs, cooperatively-owned Danish slaughterhouse Tican will be seeking slaughter pigs outside the ranks of its own membership.
calendar icon 7 July 2009
clock icon 2 minute read

Like Danish Crown it has been fighting falling throughputs as an accelerating number of Danish farmers send their weaners to Germany.

In recent months Danish Crown has closed ten production plants and sacked 3,000 workers as its supply of pigs continues to shrink.

Tican is experiencing similar problems, though on a smaller scale. Its throughput of slaughter pigs is reported to be 5-10 per cent down. In an attempt to stop the rot it will now go out into the marketplace and buy an extra 1,000-2,000 pigs a week.

Danish Crown, meanwhile, looks like a company that is falling out of love with cooperation. It prefers to run normal commercial slaughtering operations at its plants in Britain, Poland and Sweden. It could be argued that British pig producers are helping prop up the Danish pig industry, via their contribution to the profitability of Tulip.

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