DAT-Schaub is the global leader in natural sausage casings, owned by Danish cooperative meat group Danske Andelsslagteriers Tarmsalg (DAT) following the 1972 merger of DAT and German-Danish casing house Schaub & Co (founded in Esbjerg in 1893). The group acquired its Porto factory in 1991, layered in Portuguese casing house Alandal SA in 2007, and merged the two entities into the consolidated DAT-Schaub Porto S.A. in 2013 — one of the most embedded Danish industrial footprints in northern Portugal.
DAT-Schaub Porto is one of the most operationally serious Danish industrial footprints in Portugal. The Porto factory, acquired in 1991, has been continuously upgraded over three decades and today meets the casing industry’s highest international hygiene and traceability standards. The Portuguese unit specialises in tubed hog and sheep casings — staffed by a highly trained workforce — and is one of two DAT-Schaub global production hubs (alongside China) for laminated casings and Genoa bags. Casings sourced from sister DAT-Schaub Group facilities also flow through the Porto operation for Iberian and Atlantic-export distribution.
The 2007 acquisition of Portuguese casing house Alandal SA and its 2013 merger into DAT-Schaub Porto S.A. consolidated the country’s natural-casing supply into a single Danish-owned platform — rare in a fragmented European casing landscape and a meaningful competitive moat for Danish meat processors operating in Iberia and Latin America.
Few sectors illustrate the structural advantage of Danish-cooperative ownership inside Portugal as cleanly as DAT-Schaub. Pork production in Iberia is a major component of Iberian food exports, and the casing supply chain is a high-margin, technically demanding niche. DAT-Schaub’s 35-year Portuguese tenure is also a useful counterexample to the narrative that Nordic FDI in Portugal is a recent phenomenon — in this case it predates the introduction of the euro.
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