Business Case · Carcass Balance & Products

One animal, twenty products — and where the margin actually is

Every page in this plan repeats the same warning: you must move mince and stew, not just steak. None of them has ever put a number on it. This page does — it turns a 320 kg carcass into kilograms by cut, prices each one at what Swedish producers actually charge, and shows what the product mix is worth. It is the one lever that moves margin without moving the headline price.

The finding. Selling the whole animal as mixed boxes at 250 SEK/kg earns about 56,000 SEK. Taking the premium cuts out of the box and selling them as cuts at the prices Swedish naturbete producers already charge — entrecôte 535, oxfilé 630, ryggbiff 485 — earns roughly 66,000–70,000 SEK from the same animal.

That is 10,000–14,000 SEK per animal, or 500,000–700,000 SEK a year at 50 head, from changing how the meat is packaged rather than what it costs to produce. For comparison, a 15% rise in the box price — which the competitor page shows there is no room for — would earn less.

The catch is the other 85% of the animal. Every premium kilo you sell separately leaves a box that is more mince and less steak, and someone still has to want it. The whole problem of this business is in that sentence.

The product mix calculator

Move the share of premium cuts sold separately and watch both the revenue and the leftover box composition change. Prices are the direct-sale anchors verified on the competitor page; the cut-share split is modelled — see the honest-gaps note at the end.

Where the kilos are, and where the money is

The same animal shown twice: by weight, and by revenue. The gap between the two charts is the entire argument of this page.

Premium cuts

Middle cuts & roasts

Mince, stew & sausage

Bone, fat & trim

What separating the premium cuts is worth

Revenue per animal as more of the premium cuts are sold individually rather than inside a mixed box. The curve is the margin lever; the dashed line is the all-in-boxes baseline.

Revenue per animal

Everything in mixed boxes

Your current setting

The cut sheet

One carcass, cut by cut: kilograms, the price each earns as a separate cut, and what the same meat is worth inside a mixed box.

Designing the boxes

What a box has to be

Roughly 60% cuts, 40% mince is what a working Swedish producer actually ships — Hagshultskossorna's 10 kg box is about 6 kg of cuts plus 4 kg of dry-aged mince, and it always contains one premium cut.
The premium cut in the box is the reason people buy it. Strip it out entirely and the box becomes a bag of mince at a premium price, which is a different and much harder product to sell.
Size is a product decision, not a logistics one. Bulk buyers take 30–40 kg a couple of times a year and need a freezer; the plan's differentiator is a smaller recurring box for households that have neither the space nor the planning horizon.
Value-added absorbs the difficult 40%. Sausage, broth from bones, and slow-cook packs turn the least valuable meat into something with a story and a higher price per kilo than plain mince.

The balance problem, stated honestly

A carcass is not a menu. The animal decides the proportions, and roughly half of it is mince and stewing meat whatever you do. Any strategy that sells the top 15% separately has to find homes for the rest at a price that still works.

There are only four homes: mixed boxes (which need a premium cut inside to be attractive), value-added products (which need equipment, an approved kitchen and time), restaurants (which want the premium cuts, not the mince), and the abattoir price (which is the floor and earns nothing extra).

The practical resolution is a two-tier offer: a standard box that always contains one premium cut, plus a separate à-la-carte list for households and restaurants that want steak specifically. That captures most of the cut premium while keeping the box worth buying — and it is what the strongest competitor on the price survey already does.

Cross-checks against the rest of the plan. Two numbers this page validates and one it questions.

The 70% meat yield holds. Published Swedish figures put meat yield at 68.4% for Hereford and 75.4% for Limousin bulls, with international beef-breed studies spanning 69.9–79.9%. The model's 70% of carcass is at the conservative end of the published range, which is the right direction.
The slaughter yield is plausible. A 580 kg live animal giving a 320 kg carcass is 55%, against a Swedish reference that calls values around 45% low and above 60% high.
The single blended price is the questionable part. Pricing all 224 kg at one number is a modelling convenience, not a business. The unit economics and operating model both work this way, so both understate what a well-designed product range can earn — and understate how much work it takes to earn it.

Sources

What is modelled rather than published.

No Swedish cut-out sheet with kilograms per cut is published anywhere I could find. Trade cutting diagrams name the cuts and show where they sit; none give the weight each yields. The percentage split in the cut sheet is therefore modelled — anchored on the one published box composition (60% cuts / 40% mince) and on standard carcass anatomy, not read from a source.
Your cutting plant's spec will change it. How the plant trims, whether it separates entrecôtekärna from kappa, and how generously it defines "roast" all move the split by several percentage points. Ask for their standard yield sheet — they will have one, even though it is not public.
Prices are consumer prices including 12% moms, taken from producers' own lists in August 2026, and mix regions — the only per-cut REKO list found is from Skåne. The REKO page explains the VAT basis problem this creates.
Bones, fat and trim are shown as unpriced. They may be a broth product, a giveaway that builds loyalty, or a disposal cost — that is a decision, and this page does not assume it either way.

Open questions

What this page could not settle, why each answer changes a decision, and where it has to come from. Blocking means do not commit capital until it is answered.

Question	Why it matters	Where the answer comes from
What is your cutting plant's actual yield sheet, cut by cut?Blocking	The entire product range and its pricing sit on this split. A few percentage points on the premium cuts is thousands of kronor per animal, and the modelled split here is the weakest number on the page.	The approved cutting plant, at the quoting stage. They cut to a standard spec and will have the yields even though nobody publishes them.
Will households actually buy à-la-carte cuts, or only boxes?Blocking	The whole 10,000–14,000 SEK per animal upside assumes the premium cuts find buyers at cut prices. If they do not, they go back in the box and the gain disappears.	Test it in one REKO season: offer both, and see what the same customers choose.
What can a restaurant absorb, at what price and how reliably?Important	Restaurants are the natural home for premium cuts at volume, which is exactly what makes the boxes harder to fill. The trade-off has to be sized before it is committed to.	Three Stockholm restaurants: ask what they pay per kilo for entrecôte and oxfilé, in what quantity and on what payment terms.
Is there an approved kitchen for value-added products, and what does it cost?Important	Sausage and broth are how the difficult 40% earns more than mince prices — but they need approved premises, which is a separate registration and a real cost.	The cutting plant may offer it as a service; otherwise the kommun's food-control unit on what approval is needed.
What do bones, fat and offal earn or cost?Background	They are ~8% of the carcass and are currently modelled as worth nothing. Broth and dog food are real products; disposal is a real cost.	The cutting plant's terms on what is returned and what they charge to dispose of the rest.

Prepared August 2026 as a planning aid. The cut-out split is modelled from published box compositions and standard carcass anatomy, not from a published Swedish yield sheet — treat it as a planning frame to be replaced by your cutting plant's own figures. Prices are producers' published consumer prices in SEK including 12% moms at August 2026 and mix regions; per-kg revenue figures here are therefore not directly comparable with the ex-VAT figures used in the economics pages until one basis is chosen. Meat yield and slaughter yield ranges are from Swedish and international published studies. Not financial advice.