From the Ground Up - McCain Foods Limited

LEFT: Gilles Lessard, Harrison,
Claude Charland (then
Canadian ambassador to
France), Paul van der Wel,
Harnes, 1989.
RIGHT: The Beaumarais
factory in Bethune, France.
McClure contacted the French government’s regional development agency. He explained
that McCain was proposing to invest $30 million to create a manufacturing
facility that would employ 120 people to process French-grown potatoes, many of
which would be exported to other countries. Naturally, the officials were pleased and
said they would be happy to approve the project. “The only constraint we are going to
put on this,” McClure was told, “is that you must have a French majority partner.”
McClure replied, “That’s a non-starter for us. We are family owned and we have
no partners.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. McClure, that’s our policy. Any foreign investors must have a
French majority partner.”
McClure said no, and the discussion ended.
McClure and Thiers went to see the Charlie Moizard, a potato grower who was
president of the Potato Growers Association in that region of France. They knew
they had to get the potato growers on McCain’s side if they were to budge the government’s
stance. They decided to take a group of French potato farmers to Britain to see
McCain’s operations there.
Twenty French farmers went to Scarborough, where they were hosted by Mac
McCarthy. He gave them a tour of the plant and introduced them to English potato
growers, who praised McCain Foods as a good customer. Once back in France, the
growers began to put pressure on the government.
McClure’s task was complicated by the fact that the project involved French gov-
ernment agencies in the fields of agriculture,
energy, finance, the environment,
and transportation, as well as local municipal
officials. The various government
agencies did not communicate among
themselves, so any piece of correspondence
had to be copied and hand delivered
to each of them.
McClure had another meeting with
the development agency. He was told
there had been a change in the government’s
position. McCain could go ahead
with its investment in France as long as
it had a French minority investor. Again
McClure said no.
“We then got more and more of the French growers involved and got them to
turn more and more heat on the French government. Finally, the French government
agreed that we could be 100 percent foreign investment. That was very unusual,
particularly in the food and agriculture sector, because they look at that as
part of France.”
Some of the McCain people were concerned about the local political situation.
The French Communist Party was powerful in the region, and the Harnes mayor
was Communist. But the mayor was as keen as any other politician would have been
to get new economic development. “I will help you hire people who are not troublemakers,”
he promised.
McCain proceeded to convert the copper wire plant at Harnes into a state-of-the-art
french fry factory. When it opened in 1981, not only was the manufacturing equipment
the best available, so was the environmental technology that purified the wastewater
before it left the plant. In processing, water is used in washing, transporting, and cutting
the potatoes, leaving the water with bits of potato and starch in it. If it is released
untreated into a river or lake, the wastewater consumes oxygen needed by the plants
and wildlife in that river or lake. So the water has to be clarified, a process that releases
methane gas. At Harnes, McCain employs an anaerobic system that cleans the water
and recovers the methane, feeding it back into the factory to provide energy.
All the effort of getting permission to build in France turned out to be well
worth it. The opening of the Harnes plant launched McCain as a major player
80 From the Ground up
Across the chA nnel 81
Jean Bernou, CEO for
continental Europe, with
Anne-Sophie Fontaine, the
sales director for France, in a
French supermarket, 2006.