Danish Crown to close German deboning facility

Danish Crown has announced plans to close a deboning facility in Boizenburg, as it scales down production capacity in Germany in response to declining demand.

The company will bring together its slaughtering and deboning activities at its abattoir in Essen, southwest of Bremen.

Since the country was hit by African swine fever in the autumn of 2020, Germany’s production of pigs has dropped, according to Danish Crown.

Jais Valeur, group CEO of Danish Crown, commented: “We simply have to make more money in Germany. Therefore, we believe it is time to shift the focus from pure large-scale production to a more agile set-up.”

He continued: “The abattoir in Essen has an important task in supplying our own processing facilities with raw materials, and at the same time production will be adapted so that we can produce exactly the goods that our customers in both Germany and the rest of Europe demand from week to week”.

Within the next six months, Danish Crown plans to transfer a large part of the activities of the Boizenburg facility, where Danish Crown has had operations for almost 20 years, to its abattoir in Essen.

Danish Crown says that the more than 200 employees affected will be offered work at other facilities where possible.

Per Laursen, production director at Danish Crown, said: “It is a sad situation because there are many skilled and loyal employees at the facility in Boizenburg. To the extent that it is possible, they will be offered a job at one of our other facilities.”

The management in Boizenburg is now negotiating with the facility’s work committee about the conditions for transferring employees to other sites, as well as what can be done for the workers who do not want to accept the offer of another job in the group.