From the Ground Up - McCain Foods Limited

Dennis Jesson (centre),
production director in Britain,
on a 1975 visit to Australia.
Ian Cameron (left) was
Australian plant manager and
Keith Thompson (right) was
manufacturing director.
Some of the employees were afraid to say
where they worked because of the company’s
poor public image.
The problem came to a head in 1978 when
the state Environmental Protection Agency
gave McCain three weeks to stop dumping the
peels into the lagoon or the plant would be
shut down. This was an impossible demand,
as a new treatment facility could not be completed
in three weeks. Fortunately for the company,
local politicians were on its side: they
could see that McCain was going to play an
important role in job creation. With their help,
Clements got through to Sir Rupert Hamer,
the premier of the state of Victoria. Clements
promised that, given eighteen months, McCain would build a proper waste treatment
plant. The premier agreed.
The treatment plant was built on schedule and performed as promised. Now the
Ballarat plant’s waste is fermented, producing methane, which is recycled to provide
some of the energy that runs the plant’s boilers.
None of McCain’s problems in Australia was insurmountable. Clements tackled
the problem of poor sales by dividing the sales force into separate retail and food
service teams. This was done because the two markets presented different problems.
This move, in tandem with proper implementation of the end-user sales technique,
led to rising sales in Australia from the late 1970s and into the 1990s. For most of that
period, Allen Pellat headed the food service sales force, while Mike Dawson led the
retail team. “They and their sales forces deserve much of the credit for our sales success,”
says Clements.
As of 2007, labour relations were much improved, not just at McCain but for all
unionized Australian companies, thanks to new legislation introduced in the late
1980s. “Despite what happened, the reality of today is that we enjoy excellent relationships
and loyalty from our staff in Australia and New Zealand,” says human resources
director Derek Duncan. Many McCain employees have stayed with the company for
more than twenty years. Contract negotiations can be tough, but once they are settled,
the employee relations are smooth. “Our local communities view McCain as a
great place to work,” Duncan says.
Milton Rodda, as field manager, was given the job of forging better relations with
the growers. “For a farm kid at this time to take a job at McCain was like defecting
to the enemy,” says Rodda, “and looking back now, I feel that, for me, this was part of
the attraction.”
The farmers resented McCain because it was a foreign company offering contracts
that paid them just slightly more than it cost to produce the potatoes. “In those days,
potato growing was like betting on a horse,” Rodda explains. “One grew potatoes in
the hope that supplies for the fresh market would be limited at the time you were
selling, thereby ensuring a good price. Often this was not the case, but occasionally
small fortunes were made.
“Contracts were seen more as a safety net for farmers to fall back on should free
market prices be lower than the contracted price. That is, you honoured the contract
if free market prices were low and did all in your power to avoid delivering if market
prices were higher. It was against this background that I became field manager, and
a great part of my job early on was to change this culture. After a few court cases, the
growers began to understand that contracts were for real and also that this new field
manager – a traitor from their own ranks – was awake to their tricks.
“Things rapidly improved from then on, to the point where a McCain contract is
now a valuable document. Irrigation brought about huge changes. Yields improved
massively, making contract growing a better option while at the same time taking a
lot of the boom and bust from the industry. Irrigation also allowed new regions to
produce potatoes for the first time, thereby reducing the demand for Ballarat potatoes
for the fresh market. Local growers began to understand that their futures were
increasingly becoming tied to growing for processing, making my job a lot easier.”
110 From the Ground up
down under 111
lEFt: Ballarat trim tables,
2007.
rIGht: Quinton Wilkinson,
R&D manager; Dave Nichols,
McCain Competitive Edge
manager, prepared foods
plant; and Gavin Lett, plant
manager, french fry plant,
2006.