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Danish supermarkets to sell ground meat in bags

Supermarkets owned by Denmark’s Coop group are to change the packaging of ground or minced beef from plastic trays to bags.

Published: 13 August 2024 14:32 CEST

Danish supermarkets to sell ground meat in bags

Ground meat will soon be supplied in bags rather trays at Denmark's Coop stores. Photo: Liselotte Sabroe/Ritzau Scanpix

From September, minced pork products will also come in bags instead of trays, the company said.

Coop owns the Kvickly, SuperBrugsen, Brugsen and 365discount supermarket chains.

The plastic bag packaging will be of the type Flowpack, with seals across both ends and along the middle of one side of the plastic bag.

“We are doing this to save plastic and make packaging lighter, so it takes up a bit less space in the refrigerator and to make it easier to organise at home,” Coop’s head of quality and awareness Thomas Rolund said.

No other supermarket in Denmark has previously used Flowpack for meat, but other countries including the Netherlands have had successful experience with the packaging, he said.

The bags can be disposed of in plastic recycling bins – the same way as the current plastic trays. They will take up less space, the director noted.

Some lines, including minced chicken and certain premium products from smaller suppliers, will continue to come in plastic trays.

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Why can't you get fresh fish in supermarkets in Denmark?

“A decent variety of fish in the supermarket is something we really miss,” the reader wrote in a comment to a recent article. “I regularly return to my old stamping ground on the Franco-Swiss border, hundreds of kilometres from the sea, and the fresh fish in the local Carrefour supermarket is invariably excellent. Why can’t they manage it in Odense, 20 minutes from the coast?”

It’s hard not to sympathise. Denmark, after all, is practically all coast, with the country consisting of a peninsula and 1,419 islands.

The Local started by asking the Danish Chamber of Commerce, which represents most of Denmark’s leading supermarket chains.

“I have spoken with my colleague on the matter,” replied Lars Ohlsen, the chamber’s press chief. “We don’t have any research, but our best bet is that the business case does not work. That if the supermarkets had it on the shelves, they would not make a profit on them.”

We then approached Royal Fish, one of the leading buyers and sellers of Danish fish, whose chief executive, Donald Kristensen, put the near non-existence of fresh fish counters in supermarkets down to Danish penny scrimping.

“The main reason is that Danish people will not pay for fresh food,” he said. “In Denmark we don’t have a tradition of spending a lot of money on food. If you compare to other countries in Europe, it’s one of the countries where people spend the least.”

To get fresh fish in Denmark you usually have to go to a fishmonger or fishmarket, like this one at Copenhagen’s Torvehallerne. Photo: Liselotte Sabroe/Ritzau Scanpix

It’s not due to a shortage of fish, he stressed. Despite the decline of fish stocks in waters around Denmark and the crisis in the Danish fishing industry, there remains a lot to be caught in Danish waters.

“We have plenty of fish but we export all of it to the rest of Europe,” he said. “We only work with fresh fish and 99 percent of it is exported to Germany, France, Spain, Italy, in fact all of Europe.

“Danes also eat fish, but that is mainly at restaurants, ” he continued. “When we buy fish for private purposes, it’s mostly smoked fish, shrimps in brine, or canned mackerel.”

The closest Danish supermarkets come to fresh fish, outside flagship supermarkets in the big cities that is, is fish sold in gas-filled ‘MAP packs’, which can keep for longer on the shelves, he explained.

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