FROM ABATTOIR TO GLOBAL FOOD COMPANY

PROCESSING: In recent years, TiCan has progressed from being a small abattoir into a global food company where processing is taking over from the traditional abattoir through the acquisition of processing companies abroad.

With an annual production of around 25 million pigs, of which about 80% is exported, Denmark is the world’s largest exporter of pork. While growth was previously achieved through production expansion and penetration of new markets, today it mainly happens through valueadded processing of the meat. Denmark’s second largest abattoir, TiCan a.m.b.a. in northern Denmark is one of the best examples.

Global
“Not many years ago TiCan was an ordinary local abattoir. Expansive, and with its own exports, but still an abattoir,” says TiCan’s finance director Niels Jørgen Villesen. “Today half of our turnover is generated from processed products and the other half from the abattoirs in the shape of bulk products. The processing aspect will continue to grow in the future. While abattoir activities grow by only 5% annually, growth in processing is 15%. Today TiCan is no longer an abattoir, but a comprehensive, global food company.”

In the Danish pig production sector, TiCan is increasingly considered the smart little brother to the giant Danish Crown, which handles 90% of all pig slaughtering in Denmark. While the country’s pig abattoirs, large and small, have steadily joined the Danish Crown fold, TiCan has conspicuously asserted its independence as a co-operative abattoir with its local connection to the pig producers in northern Jutland.

Consumers decide
“We are proud of our local roots and our independence,” says Villesen. “It gives us more room to manoeuvre, shorter decision lines, and enables us to act swiftly and flexibly to market changes. It’s necessary too, because whereas meat exports used to be agreed between countries, in today’s globalized world the consumer decides.”

TiCan was early onto the market with semi-processing of the abattoir’s meat products. The abattoir gained a sizeable market in the UK for boiled, salted and smoked products, in addition to bacon as its traditional main product. TiCan has taken over the British company Direct Table Foods Ltd. which slices and packs bacon for the British retail market. TiCan has also recently acquired Pro-Pak Foods Ltd., a company which produces sliced, retail packed boiled meat products and a wide range of cooled ready-prepared dishes for the British consumer. In addition, TiCan is represented in the UK through TiCan Chilled Ltd. which sells and distributes TiCan’s own products as well as beef and poultry to British retail stores and delicatessens. Last year TiCan, together with the Polish company Prime Food Sp. Z.o.o., acquired the processing company Nove Sp. Z.o.o. with two processing factories in Poland.

 
Butcher John Bailey from Yoxall in Staffordshire, UK, was named “Butcher of the Year” in 2001. John Bailey is a loyal purchaser of goods from TiCan Chilled.

Success in Japan
“Pork has become a bulk product produced in good quality in many countries,” says Niels Jørgen Villesen. “So it is necessary to add value through processing – the more you can do it the better it gets. We now have the slightly paradoxical situation of delivering bulk products to Nove in Poland which then exports processed goods back to Denmark. Nove is also exporting to UK as well as covering the Polish domestic market.” In addition to production, purchasing and sales in Denmark, Poland, Germany and UK, TiCan has steady sales of pork to many countries around the world, notably Japan, Australia and the US where the company’s loin cuts have found their way into a large number of steakhouses. In Japan, TiCan is doing well with special cuts supplied to customers’ exact wishes.

http://www.tican.com