Best salami pick Pick Szeged

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Pick Szeged Zrt, a Hungarian firm with a 150-year history, is the largest Mangalica meat producer in the world; its flagship product is the world famous Pick Original Winter Salami. The company has recently begun a new research and development project in order to take its salami production to the next level, as Edina Beale reports.

For almost 150 years, Pick Szeged Zrt has produced one of Hungary’s most well-known meat product brand, the Pick Winter Salami, along with many other meat products. Since 2006 Pick Szeged has been a member of the Bonafarm group, a Hungarian firm that operates a group of companies providing the best quality food products for their customers. In 2016 Pick Szeged sold 78,429 tonnes of products, which resulted in a HUF 70 billion turnover, from which HUF 20 billion was accounted for by export activities. While its biggest market in Europe is, Pick has a significant presence in Russia and the Far East.

The company cuts and processes more than 350,000 pigs in one year, which results in annual sales of 45,000 tonnes of processed products. Its extensive premium product selection includes salamis and dry sausages, cold cuts, liver pates, frankfurters and meat products made from the unique Mangalica pork. In addition to the Pick brand, the company produces the Herz, Família, Délhús and Ringa brands. Among many of its new exciting developments, Pickstick snack sausages achieved the most success when the product was launched with international branding to be sold on both the domestic and foreign markets in September 2015. Pickstick products come in both mild and spicy flavours and their modern premium packaging provides an attractive and practical solution for customers to consume these products anywhere.

Number one employer

The Pick brand is not only well-known on the consumer market but is also recognised as a valuable brand in Hungary’s employment market. The Bonafarm group employs 6000 staff across Hungary and Pick

Szeged is the biggest employer in the region, providing jobs for 2200 people. Due to the integrated production system the Bonafarm group operates, Pick is able to provide unique opportunities for people who wish to make their career in the food industry or agriculture. They are able to learn about the whole spectrum of food production, from the production of raw ingredients to the sales of final products.

Based on the results of the world’s biggest independent employer brand research, in 2017 Pick Szeged Zrt received an award for being the best employer in its category. In this representative research companies were rated according to several aspects, including career opportunities, training, long-term job security and work/life balance.

“This award is a great pleasure and pride for us as the opinion of our current and potential future staff is extremely important to us,” said Endre Nagy, chief executive of Pick Szeged Zrt. “We believe that our committed and experienced staff and our professional expertise developed over many generations are the keys to our success. Thanks to the Bonafarm group we have a stable background that provides long-term job opportunities for our employees. Besides this, we contribute to their professional development by providing them with continuous training opportunities and offering good prospects for our colleagues to forge ahead.”

Reforming salami production

In October 2017 Pick Szeged Zrt collaborated with the University of Szeged (SZTE) to begin a research and development project with the aim of finding innovative solutions for improving the competitive position of traditional meat products. The project will continue until

2021 and cost HUF 2.57 billion, of which 1.71 billion will be funded by the European Union. Pick will work together with the educational institution to tackle several issues – to reduce the water content of meat, to develop new smoking procedures, to standardise natural mould culture, to optimise climate technology and to improve automation with regards to packaging and product development.

Some of the challenges will cover the entire salami production process and it is expected that the results can be easily adapted to the meat industry; in fact they could even become a new model for salami production. The research team are hoping to shorten the time-span of the smoking procedure by optimising the process and therefore reducing the amount of wood used for this activity. The aim of the mould culture examination is to find a solution that will guarantee consistently high product quality at all times. During the development of climate technology they will create models and technological procedures to reduce water use. The focus of the automation project is the packaging and peeling processes; the aim is to develop an automated robot or hybrid technological system for improving these processes. When working on product development, Pick is hoping to significantly increase the shelf life of meat products and to reduce or even totally replace the artificial additives, while maintaining the flavour. All in all, by the end of this complex project, Pick Hungary could well become the biggest innovator in salami production. n