April 29, 2009
Danish Crown seeks expansion in UK
Europe's largest pig slaughtering business, Danish Crown, plans to expand its UK presence significantly over the next few years.
The firm, which operates as Tulip in UK, kills and processes 35,000 pigs a week, but Chairman Carsten Jakobsen said the company wants to increase that by 10,000 pigs over the next two to three years.
Jakobsen said the firm would have a range of marketing agreements with farmers, although it was looking to grow the number of long-term partnerships.
He remained optimistic about the future for UK pork production, despite the annual UK pig kill having fallen from 15 million pigs to 8.8 million over the past decade and the country now being just 35 percent self-sufficient.
He said prices have improved from 130/kg to 150p/kg, compared with a typical cost of production of 105-110p/kg, and hopes sow herd will increase as more producers see better prices coming through.
He said demand had remained firm, despite the recession, as pork categories accounted for around 3.9 percent of the total grocery spend and 21 percent of all shopping baskets containing pork product.
He added that supply chain is getting shorter and more difficult and is expecting to see further inflation in pork prices going forward.
