DAVA Foods A/S (formerly Hedegaard Foods A/S) is a Danish food manufacturing, distribution and packing company based in

Hadsund Hadsund () is a town in the eastern part of Jutland with a population of 4,918 (1 January 2025; 5,356 incl. Hadsund South). The town is located by the narrow strait of ''Hadsund,'' along an inlet of the Mariager Fjord. It is situated south of th ...

Denmark Denmark is a Nordic countries, Nordic country in Northern Europe. It is the metropole and most populous constituent of the Kingdom of Denmark,, . also known as the Danish Realm, a constitutionally unitary state that includes the Autonomous a ...

, specialising in

egg An egg is an organic vessel grown by an animal to carry a possibly fertilized egg cell (a zygote) and to incubate from it an embryo within the egg until the embryo has become an animal fetus that can survive on its own, at which point the ...

s. The group has subsidiaries in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Estonia and is the largest supplier of whole fresh eggs in the Nordic region.Signe Mereta Lauesen
"Hedegaard skifter navn og profil"
''Landbrugsavisen'', 2 November 2015, , retrieved 5 September 2020. Since 2008, it has been a subsidiary of Dan Agro Holding A/S, a division of DLA Group.

Company

, DAVA Foods has divisions in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Estonia,"DAVA Foods koncernen"
DAVA Foods, retrieved 5 September 2020, . and a packaging division, and also exports its products primarily to the Faeroes, Germany, the Czech Republic, Lithuania,Group Structure: DAVA Foods Holding A/S
Danish Agro, retrieved 6 September 2020. Great Britain, the Middle East,Anine Holmelund Frandsen
"Dansk ægkoncern høster endnu et tocifret millionoverskud"
''FødevareWatch'', 25 June 2020, , retrieved 6 September 2020. and Latvia.Hans Herik Rasmussen
"Finsk ægpakkeri på danske hænder"
''Hadsund Folkeblad'', 5 March 2019, , retrieved 6 September 2020. The group's products include fresh eggs and pasteurised and boiled egg products. In 2018 the group had a turnover of

€ The euro sign () is the currency sign used for the euro, the official currency of the eurozone. The design was presented to the public by the European Commission on 12 December 1996. It consists of a stylized letter E (or epsilon), crossed by t ...

179 million; , turnover was approximately kr.130 million and the company had approximately 300 employees.

History

Hedegaard Foods originated in the 1980 purchase by the Danish conglomerate of Farm Æg, a small egg producer in Hadsund; the company changed its name to Hedegaard Foods in 1999."Historie"
Hedegaard Foods, archived fro
the original
on 2 March 2019, .Tidslinje
Hedegaard Foods, archived fro
the original
on 27 March 2016, . In 2008 Dan Agro Holding, a division of DLA Group, acquired the company from Hedegaard. The company moved to a larger facility in Hadsund in 2014. The company expanded by acquisitions, including of the third-largest egg packer in Denmark, Brødrene Honum in 2002, which also diversified the company into food manufacturing, and the fourth-largest, Møllebjerggård Æg, in 2010. In 2011–2013, they acquired Svenska Lantägg AB, the largest egg packing company in Sweden. In 2014 they acquired a 50% share in Munakunta, the largest egg packing and pasteurised egg production company in Finland, and established a Finnish subsidiary, Muna Foods Oy."Levnedsmiddelvirksomheden HEDEGAARD foods ekspanderer i Norden"
Hedegaard Foods, 17 June 2014, archived fro
the original
on 16 October 2014, . In 2015 they acquired OU Koks Munatootmine in Estonia from HKScan."Vores historie"
DAVA Foods, , retrieved 5 September 2020. After their name change to DAVA Foods, they acquired a controlling interest in the Norwegian company Eggprodukter AS in 2016, and in the Finnish company Närpes Äggpackeri Ab in 2019. In August 2014, the company recalled a significant proportion of their products after finding

salmonella ''Salmonella'' is a genus of bacillus (shape), rod-shaped, (bacillus) Gram-negative bacteria of the family Enterobacteriaceae. The two known species of ''Salmonella'' are ''Salmonella enterica'' and ''Salmonella bongori''. ''S. enterica'' ...

contamination which was traced to eggs from a farm in

Grindsted Grindsted, with a population of 9,721 (1 January 2025),BY3: ...

. Hedegaard Foods changed its name to DAVA Foods (for Danish Agro, Vestjyllands andel) in November 2015, but continued to market its products under the names of its various subsidiaries until the second half of 2019, when the Hedegaard brand name was phased out in Denmark."Fra HEDEGAARD til DAVA"
DAVA Foods, 2019, , retrieved 5 September 2020.

References

External links

{{Commons category, DAVA Foods
Official website

English website
Danish companies established in 1980 Food and drink companies of Denmark Hadsund