Meat producer and exporter Danish Crown said on Friday it plans to cut around 500 white-collar jobs in a major reorganization, in order to save around $73.35 million in annual costs.
“Danish Crown is in the midst of a crisis and we are facing radical changes. Our costs are simply too high in relation to our earnings,” CEO Niels Duedahl, who took the helm on Sept. 1, said in a statement.
“We are now adapting our organization and focusing 100% on our core business to ensure a better payment to the farmers who own Danish Crown,” he added.
The company in April announced it would close one of its major slaughterhouses in Denmark and lay off nearly 1,200 employees by mid-September, expecting to free up around 250 million crowns over the coming three years.
Danish crown said at the time that the number of pigs sent for slaughter in the Nordic country has dropped significantly since 2021, making it necessary to streamline production in order to pay Danish farmers a competitive price for their pigs.
The company on Friday said it intends to take further action to strengthen the focus on its core business, but did not elaborate.
($1 = 6.8168 Danish crowns)
(Reporting by Louise Breusch Rasmussen, editing by Terje Solsvik)
