Randers, 24 November 2015   

After closing the financial statements for the 2014/15 financial year, Danish Crown is paying out DKK 300 million more to its owners than last year – based on an unchanged supply of animals.  

This means that the company will disburse a supplementary payment of DKK 1.05 per supplied kg of pork to the group’s owners. Moreover, an additional DKK 0.08 per kg will be paid into the newly set up personal subordinated accounts.

At the end of the financial year, Danish Crown is posting revenue totalling DKK 59.6 billion against DKK 58 billion last year – and a profit of DKK 1,821 million relative to DKK 1,656 million last year. Of this, a total amount of DKK 1,538 million will be disbursed to the company’s owners.

- We are working hard to ensure that it pays to be a cooperative member of Danish Crown. At the least, we must be competitive in terms of the prices we pay for their animals. Therefore it is wonderful that we are able to deliver a return which is significantly higher than last year, says Danish Crown President and CEO Kjeld Johannesen.

Kjeld Johannesen underlines the fact that nowhere in Europe are the current settlement prices sufficient for pig producers to generate a profit at the moment.

This is due to a surplus of pork in Europe as a result of the closed Russian market.

- The difficult sales situation on the global market has had a significantly negative impact on the value of pork, and this obviously has a bearing on conditions for pig producers, says Kjeld Johannesen.

The solid results are still ascribable to Danish Crown’s targeted strategic efforts to create growth on the foreign markets and the company’s focus on its processing activities The group’s two biggest business areas – DC Foods and DC Pork – both contributed more than DKK 1 billion to primary earnings for the financial year.

However, DC Beef has also seen marked growth after the running-in of the new cattle slaughterhouse in Holsted. Consequently, a supplementary payment of DKK 1.55 per kg is being paid to cattle suppliers, in addition to which DKK 0.17 per kg is being paid into the newly set up personal subordinated accounts. Finally, this year a supplementary payment of DKK 0.90 per kg is being paid to the sow suppliers, with DKK 0.08 per kg being paid into the new personal subordinated accounts.

- Danish Crown faces exactly the same challenges as other slaughterhouse and meat processing companies throughout Europe. This is having a significant impact on our owners, and so our delight that Danish Crown is managing better than its European competitors in a very difficult market is slightly muted. It is worth noting that it is, in fact, a company owned by farmers which is posting such strong financial results for the benefit of its owners, says Erik Bredholt, Chairman of Danish Crown’s Board of Directors.

Danish Crown – financial highlights mDKK
mDKK	2014/15	2013/14
Revenue	59,556	58,029
EBITDA	3,976	3,550
Operating profit (EBIT)	2,471	2,178
Net profit for the year	1,821	1,656
Total assets	26,779	27,015
Equity	7,172	6,423
No. of cooperative members	8,020	8,278
No. of employees (end of year)	25,792	25,984
Supplementary payments
Pig suppliers, DKK per kg supplied	1.05	0.90
Sow suppliers, DKK per kg supplied	0.90	0.80
Cattle suppliers, DKK per kg supplied	1.55	1.40
Supplementary payments, mDKK	1,425	1,218
Credited to personal subordinated accounts
Pig suppliers, DKK per kg supplied	0.08	0
Sow suppliers, DKK per kg supplied	0.08	0
Cattle suppliers, DKK per kg supplied	0.17	0
Credited to personal subordinated accounts, mDKK	113	0
Total allocation for supplementary payments and personal subordinated accounts, mDKK	1,538	1,218
Supplies by members, million kg	1,330	1,317