Around 800 jobs are set to be lost as global meat giant Danish Crown undergoes a ‘comprehensive transformation’ aimed at strengthening its position in the global food market.
Today, Danish Crown consists of eight business units: Industry, Foods, Beef, UK, KLS, Sokolow, ESS-FOOD and DAT-Schaub. Workforce adjustments will take place gradually across countries and business units, with local consultation processes expected to begin in early June.
The transition to a new organisational model is expected to generate efficiency improvements of approximately DKK 500 million over the next two to three years. Danish Crown will consolidate a number of central group functions that are currently largely embedded in the individual business units.
A key element of the new model is to create a simpler organisation with fewer management layers, broader and more clearly defined leadership roles, and more direct reports under each individual manager.
This will lead to a reduction of around 800 positions across Danish Crown’s international organisation over the next two to three years. The restructuring will affect managers and white-collar employees as central group functions are consolidated across business units.
Workforce adjustments will take place gradually across countries and business units, with local consultation processes expected to begin in early June.
New ownership model
The company said it has improved its competitiveness and laid the foundation for a new ownership model over the past year and is now entering the next phase of the transformation and moving away from its previous conglomerate structure to a new organisational structure.
“We need to normalise Danish Crown fundamentally, so we resemble other international companies in our industry. Today, our business units largely operate as independent companies. We are changing that by bringing our businesses closer together. We need to operate as one fully integrated group across business areas and across countries,” said Group CEO Niels Ulrich Duedahl.
“By consolidating functions at group level, we can leverage our scale better, work more consistently across the organisation and create a more efficient operation. Instead of doing things differently depending on which country you are based in, we need shared standards, systems, and targets. Over the next two to three years, this means fewer management layers and fewer employees.”
“At Danish Crown we have improved our competitiveness, but we still have significant untapped potential that we believe we can realise. The competition in the global food market is intense, and our owners are facing challenging times due to the quotation level. This reinforces the need to continue our transformation to improve our competitiveness and the quotation to our owners. This is an important step in that journey.”