FDBusiness.com

Japanese consumers and restaurants have for decades had a strong preference for Danish pork, which is still growing. Danish Crown is consequently installing a new production line at its abattoir in Blans near Sønderborg, which will increase the number of employees from 1,100 to 1,200. Danish Crown’s exports to Japan amounted to more than DKr3 billion last year, corresponding to about 30% of Denmark’s total exports of goods to the world’s third-largest economy.

“It’s great to be in a situation where we’re taking on new people, especially when we here are talking about permanent jobs, which are not affected by fluctuations in the supply of pigs. Our Japanese customers are crazy about a specific product based on minced pork, which we have sold to them for a few years. This means that we now need to hire more people to both debone fore-ends and run the actual production,” explains Søren F Eriksen, chief executive of Danish Crown Pork.

He continues: “The EU and Japan have just signed a free trade agreement, which will be implemented continuously over the next ten years. The agreement will gradually simplify the very complex customs system applied by Japan today, so we expect that increasing exports to Japan will lead to even more jobs in the coming years.”

Søren F Eriksen elaborates: “Today, the Japanese almost exclusively buy fresh meat, which they process and pack themselves. Several of our customers wish to change this and want us to handle as much of the processing as possible. If this becomes the case, we’ll need even more people.”