The German pig tower in Maasdorf near Köthen in Saxony-Anhalt was considered the only livestock facility of this type in the territory of the current European Union. It turns out that the same multi-story pigsty is located in Estonia and, unlike the German one, it is still in operation – we read in Agrarheute.
Soviet technical thought
The six-story pigsty in Maasdorf lost its occupancy permit a few years ago and has been empty for years. However, a copy of it can be found in Viljandi, Estonia. The facility was also built in the 1970s, according to the same design by Soviet engineers.
Before the collapse of the Soviet Union, the meat from the pigs produced there was to supply butcher shops in Leningrad and the surrounding area.
In the hands of Baltic tycoons
In the early 1990s, the multi-story pigsty was taken over by the Finnish consortium Ekseko, which uses the pig skyscraper to this day. However, it thoroughly modernized and expanded the plant, also with environmental impact in mind. Currently, the operator produces 280,000 piglets there and fattens 50,000 pigs.
Today, Ekseko is the largest pig producer in the Baltic countries and the main supplier of meat to the Estonian Rakvere Lihakombinaat meat processing plant. The 230,000 piglets that are not fattened in the skyscraper are sold to contract fattening, and after 4 months the partners also send the adult pigs to the slaughterhouse and processing plant of the Rakvere group.
The plants in Ekseko and Rakvere are therefore a leader on the Estonian market. Especially since the entire pig population in Estonia in 2023 was only 275,000. Rakvere also has a number of subsidiaries in Latvia and Lithuania, and exports to other countries.
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