Business
Danish Crown lays off 472 employees
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January 17th, 2014
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More firings could be in the offing as the company makes “major structural changes”
Slaughterhouse giant Danish Crown has closed both its Tulip and Danish Crown locations in the mid-Funen town of Faaborg.
The company said in a release that the changes were necessary if the company was to stay competitive.
“We have spent the last few months trying to resolve how to responsibly resolve the current challenge of overcapacity while maintaining a sharp focus on costs in the Danish part of the production,” said Danish Crown head Kjeld Johannesen in the release.
Employees were called to an information meeting in the cafeteria just before the axe fell.
Faaborg's mayor, Christian Thygesen, expressed his sadness at the closing of the slaughterhouses in his town.
“We had been afraid that it would happen, but hoped we could avoid it,” Thygesen told DR Fyn.
Thygesen said that losing so many jobs at one time would hit his small town hard.
Jobs will be hard to replace
“This is an incredibly hard blow,” he said. “450 manufacturing jobs do not grow on trees and it will be an incredibly difficult task to relocate the affected employees.”
Thygesen said that he is in dialogue with the Danish Crown and the surrounding municipalities about finding jobs for the laid off employees.
Slaughterhouses in Skærbæk on the west coast of Jutland and the island Bornholm are also at risk of being shut down. If those shut downs happen, 350 more jobs would be lost.
READ MORE: Meatpackers look to state for help
“It is no secret that the slaughterhouse on Bornholm has been in our sights for a long time because it simply costs significantly more per kilogram of meat to produce meat on the island,” head of DC Pork Jesper Friis told DR Nyheder.
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