Business
Westfleisch 
Westfleisch is pursuing both a growth and a quality strategy with targeted investments in the modernisation of individual locations.
GERMANY, Münster. Westfleisch was able to successfully break away from the negative trend in the sector in 2018. In 2018, the cooperative slaughtered almost 7.8 mill. pigs - excluding the decline in wage slaughters, this represents an increase of 1.6% compared to 2017.
In the same period the company slaughtered 425,000 cattle (+ 0.2%). By way of comparison: in both disciplines, the German overall market suffered a minus of around 3% in 2018.The self-service meat, convenience and sausage segments developed very positively with sales growth of 7.1%.
"Due to the significantly lower price of pigs, our sales revenues in 2018 would inevitably be lower than in 2017," explained Carsten Schruck, CFO of Westfleisch. After all, while the average price of pork in 2018 was around 12% lower than in the previous year, the company's turnover in 2018 fell by only 7.1% to € 2.6 bn. The annual surplus changed only slightly from € 12.6 to 11.7 mill.
The members of the cooperative also benefit from this. As in previous years, they will receive a dividend of 4.2% on their business assets for the 2018 financial year. In addition, the cooperative will pay special bonuses of around € 3 mill. on all animal species to the contract farmers.
Westfleisch is pursuing both a growth and a quality strategy with targeted investments in the modernisation of individual locations. As one of the leading meat marketers in Germany and Europe, the company aims to achieve even greater added value across the entire process chain - from agriculture to raw materials and processing.
Source: Westfleisch