CEO of Danish Crown Beef, Finn Klostermann, will leave Danish Crown at the end of the year.
His departure coincides with a major organisational transformation at Danish Crown, under which seven of the company’s eight business units will be integrated into a new shared organisational structure.
This also includes Danish Crown Beef, which will be incorporated into the broader business under a new global leadership team responsible for shared manufacturing, shared sales, and shared product development. Danish Crown Beef will, however, remain a separate legal entity with the same ownership structure, owner services, and profit distribution model.
The organisational transition will take place over the next six months, but from the beginning of the new year, the position of CEO of Danish Crown Beef will no longer exist.
According to Finn Klostermann, the transition to the new organisation represents a natural point at which to hand over the baton.
“I have enjoyed being part of Danish Crown for almost 20 years. But Danish Crown is now on the threshold of a fundamental organisational transformation, and therefore it feels natural for me to step down at this point,” says Finn Klostermann.
“I am proud to have represented more than 3,000 cattle farmers and would like to thank them all for the trust they have shown over the years. Together with the highly dedicated employees in Beef, we have significantly increased our level of value-added processing and created greater commercial value from our owners’ cattle during my time as CEO. It has been an exciting and rewarding journey. Built on an efficient production platform, branding, business development and strong commercial execution have been our guiding principles, and we have successfully moved the beef business further up the value chain through close collaboration with both our owners and customers,” he says.
Finn Klostermann will continue in his current role at Danish Crown Beef until the end of the year.
Group CEO of Danish Crown, Niels Ulrich Duedahl, thanked Finn Klostermann for his significant contribution during nearly 20 years with Danish Crown, including the last 12 years as CEO of Danish Crown Beef.
“Finn has been a driving force behind the development and strengthening of Danish Crown’s beef division, which has more than doubled in size under his leadership. His strong commercial insight and ability to identify development opportunities have significantly increased the value created from our owners’ cattle. At the same time, Finn has been a champion of strong relationships with both existing and new customers, most recently demonstrated by Danish Crown securing a major and strategically important agreement with McDonald’s,” says Niels Ulrich Duedahl.
He also emphasises that the next step is to strengthen competitiveness by making better use of the scale and capabilities of the company.
Danish Crown has approximately 3,700 cattle-owning cooperative members, who also express their appreciation for the collaboration.
“Finn has made an outstanding contribution to Beef over many years. He has been well-liked and highly respected by our owners, and we would like to extend a sincere thank you to him. I would particularly like to thank him for his extensive efforts in relation to the burger facility in Vejen. Finn deserves a great deal of the credit for the fact that we now further process a large share of our beef,” says Hanne Line Revsbech, Vice Chair of Danish Crown and Chair of the Cattle Forum.
The change follows the organisational adjustment initiated by Danish Crown in June, when the Group’s corporate functions were brought together. Under the new structure, the currently independent business units Sokołów, Beef, Industry, Foods, KLS, UK and ESS-FOOD will be integrated into a new shared organisation designed to equip Danish Crown to deliver on its future strategic direction, centred on increased value-added processing, sharper market focus, stronger brands and greater cost efficiency.