Danish Crown: 'pig market is difficult'

Pork slaughterhouse Danish Crown today published the results for the first half of financial year 2025/2026. The cooperative group speaks of a historically difficult situation in the pig meat market and sees gross margins decline. Due to a focus on cost control, the competitive position has improved according to the company. A change in the payment system for pigs announced last spring affects the figures. The gross margin came under heavy pressure due to the difficult situation in the pork market. The margin fell from 14.2% to 11.8% and came to just under €500 million. Danish Crown describes the market conditions as historically difficult due to a large supply of pork on the European market. This is partly due to Chinese tariffs on European pork and export bans for the Spanish sector following outbreaks of African swine fever at the end of last year. The beef market is characterized by a very tight supply, according to Danish Crown. This puts pressure on factory capacity utilization. Change in payment affects result EBIT amounted to €84 million, compared with €177 million a year earlier. Part of this decline is related to the changed payment system. It was decided to process part of the annual supplementary payment directly in the payout prices. Adjusted for this change, EBIT would have been about €15 million lower than last year according to management. Net profit would also, after adjustment, have turned out higher. This is due to the reversal of earlier write-downs on the production site in Essen and lower income taxes. Supply of slaughter pigs stabilizes Danish Crown factories in Denmark have for some time been struggling with a declining supply of slaughter pigs due to strong competition in the domestic market. In particular, Tican, affiliated with Premium Food Group (Tönnies), managed to gain market share. In the first quarter of 2026, Danish Crown's Danish sites processed around 2.39 million pigs, according to figures from Danske Svineproducenter. A year earlier, there were about 2.38 million. This points to stabilization, while growth in the number of slaughters is mainly taking place at other slaughterhouses.