From the Ground Up - McCain Foods Limited

The continental European
management team, with visitors
Janice Wismer and Simon Jones,
at the mid-year meeting in
Chantilly, France, 2006.
Front row: (left to right)
Erwin Pardon, Andrzej
Czudowski, Pedro Alexandre,
Helga Hofmeister, Lourenço
de Sottomayor, Francine
Bouquillon. Second row from
front: Han van den Hoek, Janice
Wismer, Lucile Degrave, Laurent
Ferré, Frédéric Jaubert, Michel
Delaître, Furny Soerel. Third row
from front: Bertrand Delannoy,
George Ghonos, Jean-Louis
Gilardi, Simon Jones. Back row:
Alain Olivier (in black sweater),
Philippe Théry, Ronald Felius,
Jean Bernou, Jean-François
Delage, Christophe Rigo, Jean-
Claude Blaimont, Yves Roptin.
Absent: Kees Oreel.
years resisted oven fries, which have long been McCain’s biggest seller in Germany
and Britain. But by 2006, they were quickly gaining popularity.
For the most part, however, McCain tries to adapt its product offerings to existing
consumer preferences. In the Mediterranean regions, people cook most of their
food, including potatoes, in an oiled pan. In northern France, Belgium, and the
Netherlands, most still prefer the deep fryer for french fries. Germans prefer using
the oven. Italians also use the oven, but they like to roast potatoes as part of a main
dish of fish or meat. McCain has a variety of potato products to address these different
culinary styles.
The decision to build a huge, state-of-the art plant at Matougues demonstrates the
company’s confidence that it can continue to thrive in Europe. In 2006, as McCain
was celebrating its twenty-fifth anniversary in France, a third shift was added to the
Matougues plant. In the same year, however, McCain closed its factory in Hoofddorp,
in the Netherlands, because the company had more manufacturing capacity than was
warranted given a slow-growing market for french fries.
Bernou finds that his European employees are proud of being part of a familyowned
company whose practices reflect the values of honesty and trust, and respect
for the individual, exemplified by its founders. They must like working for McCain,
because they tend to stay a long time. The average worker at the original French plant
in Harnes has worked there for thirteen years, and one-quarter of the employees have
worked at Harnes for more than eighteen years.
Nowhere more than Europe, with its many different cultures, is it more obvious
that McCain’s global success is based on its ability to adapt to local conditions. McCain
Hellas, for example, could not possibly have been successful without the leadership
of George Ghonos and his team. When Harrison McCain hired Ghonos, he told him
not to worry about making profits for the first five years but to concentrate on building
up a market. At the time, Dutch and Belgian frozen french fry processors were
unloading their lower-grade products at low prices in Greece. Paul van der Wel, then
McCain’s senior director for continental Europe, advised Ghonos to take on the lowcost
suppliers at their own game by taking the lower-grade product from Beaumarais.
Ghonos rejected that advice, deciding instead to differentiate McCain in Greece on
the basis of quality. And so he imported only top-grade product.
The strategy worked brilliantly. Ghonos has “written the bible on how to succeed
in an emerging market,” says Jean Bernou. In a country of just eleven million people,
McCain’s sales volumes are as high as in some other countries with three times the
population.
In Greece, the art of winemaking has been practised for four thousand years, so
the McCain motto “drink the local wine” is especially appropriate. Drinking the local
wine in Greece means offering an assortment that fits the local cuisine. That means
heavier, thicker cut fries to go with souvlaki, for example.
Harrison and Wallace McCain were always ready to travel long distances to create
local links in their global empire. Four decades ago, while Harrison McCain was
expanding McCain Foods from Florenceville to Britain and continental Europe,
Wallace McCain had his sights set on a much more distant market, seventeen thousand
kilometres away on the other side of the world.
100 From the Ground up
Across the chA nnel 101
LEFT: The French
management team: (left
to right) Michel Delaître,
Stéphane Renault, Francis
Dupont, Michel Figeac, Jean
Pierre Zilinski, Jean Bernou,
Alain Olivier, 2001.
RIGHT: Allison McCain with
George Ghonos in an Athens
supermarket.