From the Ground Up - McCain Foods Limited

Cedric Ritchie (centre) of the
Bank of Nova Scotia inducts
Harrison and Wallace into
the Canadian Business Hall
of Fame, 1993.
“Thirty-four years.”
“And you’ve been dealing with every
aspect of it – agriculture, sales, everything?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I’ve been doing nothing but finance
for twelve years, so I guess I know
a lot more about it than you, so why don’t
you just accept my recommendation?”
Harrison said, “Okay.”
It had taken Harrison and Wallace a
year to fill the CFO job, and clearly they
were prepared to put a lot of trust in
the person they had finally chosen. This
management style was again illustrated
when the brothers were approached
by a Calgary-based engineering company
that wanted to engineer the new McCain plant planned for Portage la Prairie,
Manitoba.
“Harrison and in particular Wallace believed we should engineer the plants ourselves,”
says Jim Evans, a Florenceville-based engineer at the time. But the Calgarians
insisted they could do a better job for less cost, and they insisted on meeting with
Harrison. “Finally, Harrison agreed to see them. So they came to Florenceville, two
guys in leather suits, wearing lots of jewellery. Harrison just listened.
“Then, looking over the rim of his glasses as he often did, Harrison said, ‘Gentlemen,
Mr. Bliss and Mr. Evans have convinced me that you will build the plant for a million
dollars less. But I think the plant will then be worth more than a million dollars less.
Therefore, I suggest that you go back home. We will not use your services.’”
In his efforts to centralize administrative and financial functions, Terry also had
the full support of Howard Mann, McCain’s first professional president and CEO, who
directed the day-to-day operations of the company from 1995 until 2004. Mann also
backed the work of Rastogi in reorganizing the company’s information technology
and encouraged Lloyd Borowski’s work in standardizing factory processes.
When Mann, who grew up in London’s working-class East End, first arrived at
McCain, he admitted that he knew “nothing whatsoever about potatoes.” But he knew
plenty about the food industry, having worked in it in the United Kingdom for twenty-
seven years. For his services to the industry,
he was named an Officer of the Order
of the British Empire (OBE) in 1994.
Mann left his mark by establishing the
Toronto office and convincing Harrison
McCain of the need to sell some companies
that were not part of McCain’s
core business or which could not attain
a sufficient market share or profitability.
Despite selling off those assets, McCain’s
revenues grew from $3.5 billion to almost
$6 billion during Mann’s tenure. And
it was Mann who persuaded Harrison
McCain that, although MacFries are not
a McCain brand, McDonald’s should be
one of the company’s core businesses.
Mann established corporate vicepresident
positions in engineering and agriculture. He formed the senior executives
council through which he promoted coordination among the regional operational
CEOs and corporate vice-presidents. This paved the way for Dale Morrison’s policy of
developing more corporate, as opposed to regional, decision making.
Mann got along well with chairman Harrison McCain, to whom he reported until
Harrison’s health deteriorated.
Companies grow in two ways. One way is organically, meaning that if you are producing
frozen food, you produce more of it in your existing facilities or you expand
those facilities or you build new ones. The second way to grow is by buying other
companies.
Over the five decades of its existence, McCain has successfully used both methods:
half of its growth has been organic, and the other half has come through acquisitions.
By 2007, the two routes to growth had resulted in a McCain manufacturing
base in North America of sixteen processing plants, nine in Canada and seven in the
United States.
The two New Brunswick plants, in Florenceville and Grand Falls, had been expanded
146 f rom the Ground up
the home front 147
Howard Mann speaking at
the opening of the new plant
in Coaldale, Alberta, 2000.