Randers, August 19, 2010
On Tuesday afternoon prominent visitors descended on the slaughterhouse Ugglarps Slakteri, which is owned by Danish Crown’s Swedish subsidiary KLS Ugglarps.
Drawing quite a lot of media attention, the Swedish prime minister, Fredrik Reinfeldt, dropped by the facility in southern Sweden to hear more about the company’s apprenticeship programme which has been devised in collaboration with the Municipality of Trelleborg to help young people find a job and also to contribute to attracting qualified labour to the slaughterhouse.
The apprenticeship programme is targeted at unemployed young people aged between 18 and 30. So far, two groups have completed the programme with 8 out of 12 subsequently being offered permanent employment by Ugglarps Slakteri.
- The prime minister wanted to know more about our apprenticeship programme and how it works because it is very much in line with the Swedish government’s strategy of supporting job creation in the private sector in Sweden, explains Johan Andersson, CEO of KLS Ugglarps.
He welcomed Fredrik Reinfeldt to the slaughterhouse himself together with the factory management and two young apprentices.
- As part of the guided tour, the two apprentices showed a very interested prime minister how to debone a pig, while also talking to him about the programme as a whole, which he found very impressive, says Johan Andersson.
- Afterwards we had a chat with the prime minister and a chance to talk to him about important issues for our industry. He was very keen to hear more about the situation in the food industry as a whole as the Swedish government has a vision of Sweden being the no. 1 food nation in Europe, and without good Swedish raw ingredients this will, of course, never happen, says Johan Andersson in conclusion.
About KLS Ugglarps
KLS Ugglarps is Sweden’s second-largest slaughterhouse enterprise with facilities in Ugglarp near Trelleborg and in Kalmar. Each year the company slaughters more than 500,000 pigs, approx. 52,000 cattle and approx. 20,000 sheep and lambs. It has about 450 employees. The slaughterhouse in Ugglarp has approx. 100 employees who slaughter 4,170 pigs a week.