Danish Crown

Why it is renowned

Danish Crown is the world's largest pork exporter and Europe's largest pork producer.¹² Owned by about 5,620 Danish farmers, it employs about 26,600 people at 89 production sites in 30 countries, and in 2020–21 its exports came to DKK 24 billion, about a fifth of Denmark's food exports.¹ Abroad it owns Sokołów, the best known brand in the Polish meat industry, and KLS Ugglarps, Sweden's largest slaughterhouse company, and runs Westcrown in Germany with Westfleisch.³ Its Steff-Houlberg sausages are sold as far away as Seoul, in the restaurants of Steff Korea.² The international press reports on it as Europe’s largest meat processing company,⁴ and in Britain as the bacon producer whose UK arm took £610m in the year to September 2023 and its investment of about £100m in a bacon factory near Manchester.⁵

The story

On 14 July 1887, 500 farmers around Horsens founded Denmark's first co-operative pig abattoir; it slaughtered its first pigs on 22 December that year.² Co-operative abattoirs soon opened across the country and sold their bacon in England together: three of them set up the Danish Bacon Agency in 1902, renamed the Danish Bacon Company in 1906, and Denmark became the main supplier of bacon to the English market.² Tulip's mark of three tulips, registered in 1909, was the first trademark registered in Denmark and was first used for export to England in 1912.² The name Danish Crown was taken in 1970 by merged abattoirs in Vojens and Kolding, chosen to be known in export markets; the present group was formed in October 1990 from Tulip Slagterierne, Østjyske Slagterier and Sundby-Wenbo.² Steff-Houlberg joined in 2002.¹ The head office is in Randers, and since 2010 the business has been a limited company owned by the farmers' co-operative.¹

What to know it by

• Tulip²1909Bacon, cold cuts and liver pâté; the first trademark registered in Denmark
• Steff-Houlberg²1889Sausages, from Søren Houlberg's grocery of 1889 in Copenhagen
• Friland³1992Organic meat, part of the group since 1999