Viscofan SA is churning out enough sausage casings to reach the moon, as clients such as Sara Lee Corp find new ingredients to stuff into the Spanish company's customized skins.
Mechanically deboned chicken, maple syrup, turkey, soy protein and corn starch are joining traditional staples such as beef, paprika, pork loins, tongues, nutmeg and blood.
"You can make sausages out of anything," said Chief Executive Officer Juan Ignacio Villegas, in an interview. "The hotdog is a means of packaging protein of whatever type."
"Mad cow" disease has reduced meat consumption around the world, almost putting a competitor that invented the artificial casing out of business. Viscofan, the world's biggest maker of such casings, is faring better.
Cost cuts, reduced competition and rising demand for lower- fat chicken and turkey sausages should help 2002 profit rise by 33 percent.
Investors have noticed. Viscofan, whose clients include Kraft Foods Inc.'s Oscar Mayer, has outperformed every stock on the IBEX stock index this year, soaring 69 percent to 8.23 euros. The Pamplona-based company has doubled its market share to about 40 percent since 1995 by undercutting rivals' prices.
"There's been a price war in the sector, and Viscofan has been winning," said Eduardo Salles, who helps manage about 1 billion euros (US$906 million) at Bankpyme SGIIC and owns shares.
The company expects sales to rise 5 percent to 415 million euros this year.
The German statesman Otto von Bismarck said the two things you don't want to see being made are sausages and laws. The making of artificial sausage skins isn't nearly as painful to witness.
Cellulose casings are made from cottonseed pulp dissolved in vats of caustic soda and stretched into 6km long tubes. A machine then cuts and compresses the tubes like an accordion into a foot-long stick, which can contain enough casing for 200 hotdogs. Food producers fill the casings with meat. After cooking them, they peel the skins and discard them, leaving the frankfurters. The protein near the outside of the hotdog gels, forming what appears to be a skin but isn't.
Other sausage cases, made from plastic, are also stripped off. A third type is made from collagen from cow skins, and is sometimes left on sausages such as bratwurst for the consumer to eat. Viscofan makes all three varieties.
The artificial casing was invented in the Chicago stockyards in the 1920s by Erwin O. Freund, the founder of Viskase Companies Inc, Viscofan's biggest competitor. The problem with natural intestines is they're short, irregular and, to most people, unappetizing. Artificial casings can be hundreds of meters long, tailor-made, and are uniform in size and durability. That's important because one break in a casing can jam up a sausage-making machine, sending meat flying everywhere.
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