Danish Crown to finance pig farmer

The Danish group Danish Crown is helping fattening pig farmers to finance new barns. The cooperative is therefore making more than €25 million available and hopes to give the slaughter figure a boost.

Danish Crown is struggling with declining slaughter figures and is therefore unable to take full advantage of the lucrative sales opportunities to China, among others. Danish pig farmers are keen to scale up (due to good prices), but the country's banks have been reluctant to finance farmers since the 2008 financial crisis. That is why the Danish Crown itself is going to play bank. The abattoir has plenty of cash, considering the broken financial year 2018/2019 still €335 in profit credited became. 

€87 per pig place
An investment program has been set up, with more than 200 million Danish kroner. Converted this is about €25 million. The Danish pig farmers can borrow this money for the construction of new stables. Danish Crown limits the loan to a maximum of €25% of the investment costs, the rest must come from the market. This equates to €87 per pig place.

When the new barn is operational, the amount must be repaid within 2 to 3 years. The interest rate has been provisionally set at 4%. Funding applications are handled under the 'first come, first served' principle. With the program, Danish Crown hopes that the number of slaughters in Denmark will grow by 1,2 million annually.

Wouter Job

Wouter Baan is editor-in-chief of Boerenbusiness. He also focuses on dairy, pig and meat markets. He also follows (business) developments within agribusiness and interviews CEOs and policymakers.

w.baan@boerenbusiness. Nl

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