McCain Foods in Easton is a mechanized wonderland of ... · November 2010 Maine Ahead >> 31 or any French fry lover, witnessing a 36-hour run of curly fries at McCain Foods is almost

November 2010 Maine Ahead >> 29

GOLDMcCain Foods in Easton is a mechanized wonderland

of potato processing—the source of millions of pounds of fries in every shape known to modern man—and

is the potato-powered engine behind Aroostook County’s economy. BY HENRY GARFIELD • PHOTOS BY SHANE LEONARD

Fried

30 >> Maine Ahead November 2010

PRIVATE TOUR

Two McCain workers inspect incoming potatoes at one of the many quality-control checkpoints in the fry-making process.

Following a potato on its

journey throughout the plant is a little

like being inside a three-dimensional

game of Chutes and Ladders.


or any French fry lover, witnessing a 36-hour run of curly fries at McCain Foods is almost a religious experience.

It’s a river of fries—in fact, a million pounds of moving food, coursing through the

confines of cutters and catwalks and conveyor belts, being batter-dipped, baked, bagged, and frozen, and finally packed into boxes ready to be shipped out to await the orders of hungry customers.

McCain Foods is the largest buyer of potatoes in Aroostook County, the potato capital of Maine. Ap-proximately one-third of all the potatoes grown in the County are processed in the McCain factory in Easton. That order of curly fries you got with your roast beef sandwich at Arby’s or the large fries that came with your McDonald’s extra value meal may well have come from the fields surrounding the McCain plant; likewise, the bag of tater tots or waf-fle fries in the back of your freezer. The company’s motto might as well be “This spud’s for you.”

“All of our raw material is grown locally and pro-cessed in this facility,” says plant manager David McKenney. “That’s an area about 60 miles north to south and 40 miles east to west.”

You can see the McCain plant long before you reach it, across the low, rolling potato fields cut

by only a few roads. Easton really isn’t on the way to anywhere, though it lies in the middle of a long, thin triangle with vertices in Presque Isle, Fort Fairfield, and Mars Hill. But it’s a destination in its own right for the hundreds of people who work at McCain Foods.

The McCain plant, which consists of several build-ings on a 100-acre piece of land about a mile from the town center, employs 522 people, most of them hourly employees on four shifts. The plant contracts with 56 farm operations in the County on lands to-taling more than 22,000 acres. The company has been a lynchpin of northern Maine’s economy ever since it purchased the Easton plant in 1976.

With 53 factories worldwide on six continents, from Poland to New Zealand, Argentina to Taiwan, McCain is a big business. But its roots are nearby, just 30 miles away across the New Brunswick bor-der (see sidebar). And it’s not too big to retain a lo-cal flavor. McKenney, who has been with McCain for 21 years, grew up in Mars Hill, and most mem-bers of the plant’s senior staff have deep roots in the fertile County soil.

McCain factories in other parts of the U.S. pro-duce frozen vegetables, snacks, and appetizers, and even pizza. But the Easton operation is exclusively potato products. That’s still plenty of work to keep

Left to right: Bart Bradbury, field manager; Brianne O’Leary, senior field representative; David McKenney,

plant manager; Shane Kingsbury, potato farmer.


PRIVATE TOUR PRIVATE TOUR

Job Descriptions

As a senior representative, Brianne O’Leary

(top) spends a lot of her time outdoors,

working with potato farmers at all stages

of the growing process. Her job doesn’t end

with the harvest, however; she’ll apply her

knowledge to the proper monitoring and

climate control of storage facilities and

other issues to ensure that McCain’s has a

steady supply of raw material.

Director of agronomy Leigh Morrow

(center) oversees the labs at the plant,

where each load of potatoes is put through

a battery of tests for things like starch

content and color. Growers are paid

depending on the quality of the potatoes

they deliver.

Jeff Allen (bottom) is part of the team that

ensures a quality product at every stage of

production. Here he inspects the stream

of curly fries between the cutting and

cooking stages.


the plant busy around the clock and around the calendar.“We have two French fry production lines,” McKenney

says. “Prime 1, which we call our conventional line, can do 12 tons an hour. Prime 2, which is conventional batter products, spiral products, and cross tracks [waffle-cut po-tatoes], does 15 tons an hour. We also have a specialty line, and that’s for products such as potato puffs, baby cakes, and hash browns.” The specialty line processes a mere two and a half tons an hour; all the varieties are processed in 16 packaging lines.

Following a potato on its journey through the plant is a little like being inside a three-dimensional game of Chutes and Ladders. The overriding impression is of levels and movement and machinery. Steep metal stairs lead to catwalks alongside conveyor belts that shepherd the spuds through the various stages of the produc-tion process. The process is almost entirely automated, though inspectors monitor every step. It’s also noisy. Inside the plant, managers communicate with micro-phones and headsets so they don’t have to shout over the clattering of the equipment. Among McCain’s 462 hourly employees are 45 full-time mechanics whose job it is to keep the equipment running. The plant also employs a full-time nurse and emergency medical staff.

A lot happens to a potato on its way to becoming a curly

fry. It’s planted, of course, and incubated in the ground over the course of the northern summer. McCain works closely with growers, dispatching agronomists to the fields to monitor the health of the crop. Shane Kingsbury and his father, Keith, plant 850 acres of potatoes a year on their farm in Bridgewater, about 15 miles south of the factory. Half of their crop will be sold to McCain; the other half will go to a manufacturer of potato chips.

Brianne O’Leary is a senior field representative with McCain. Like so many who work here, she is an Aroostook County native. During the growing season, she spends a lot of time out in the potato fields, working closely with the growers on everything from fertility recommenda-tions to the moisture content in storage buildings. She’ll file regular reports to the company forecasting the quality of the crop. “This year, the growing conditions were excel-lent,” she says. “Potatoes like warm days and cool nights;

With 53 factories worldwide on six

continents, from Poland to New Zealand,

Argentina to Taiwan, McCain is a big

business. But its roots are nearby.

Some clients want a little bit of peel left on the potato. Nancy Guimond (right) and Mona Saucier are inspecting potatoes after they’ve come out of the peeler.


PRIVATE TOUR

IT’S BIG.

One of every three French fries sold in the world

is a McCain French fry. The company’s customers

include Arby’s, McDonald’s, Dunkin’ Donuts, Wendy’s,

and Friendly’s. McCain fries are as ubiquitous as the

Heinz ketchup you’ve likely dipped them in.

McCain has 13 factories in Canada, 11 in the

United States, six in the United Kingdom, four in

France and Australia, three in South Africa, two in

China (including one in Taiwan), two in Holland,

Belgium, and New Zealand, and single factories in

Colombia, Argentina, and India. If you could sell

French fries to penguins, McCain would be on every

continent on Earth.

It all began in 1955 in Florenceville, New Bruns-

wick, just 30 miles from Easton. Brothers Harrison and

Wallace McCain, then in their 20s, were working for one

of Canada’s major businesses—Harrison as a salesman

for Irving Oil and Wallace as a manager in an Irving-

owned hardware chain. But potatoes were in their

blood. Their ancestors were Irish immigrants, and their

father, A.C. McCain, had been a successful exporter of

Canadian potatoes to the Caribbean and Latin America.

Pooling their earnings and a small inheritance, they

opened a factory to freeze potatoes and other vegeta-

bles on February 23, 1957, on land that had been a cow

pasture on the bank of the Saint John River.

The frozen foods and fast food industries were

both in their infancy. The McCain brothers went

through a long period of fry experimentation while

frozen fruits and other vegetables paid the bills. They

discovered that local potatoes didn’t make good

French fries—they weren’t long enough or solid

enough. But it was difficult to convince local farmers

on either side of the border to introduce the russet

Burbank, a potato from the Pacific Northwest, which

dominates the local crop today.

Expansion happened slowly but steadily. By

1968, McCain had become the largest frozen vegetable

company in Canada, and one of the largest French fry

producers in the world. In 1969, the company built its

first factory outside of Canada in Scarborough, England.

McCain acquired the Easton, Maine, property in 1976.

The company is still based in Canada, with corpo-

rate headquarters in Toronto. A factory in Poland now

looks very much like a factory in Maine. “In the past

five years, there’s been a mission to align all facto-

ries,” says David McKenney, plant manager at Easton.

“McCain globally is now focusing on standardizing.

That is from the top down, right to the floor of the

factory. It has been a good movement for us. A lot

of wins have come from sharing ideas across the

communications network that has been established.”

Standardization sells: Witness the success of

McDonald’s. Ray Kroc established that global giant on

the four simple principles of quality, service, cleanli-

ness, and value. Likewise, McCain has its “five pillars”:

safety, quality, delivery, cost, and people.

“All goals tie back into those pillars,” McKenney

says.

How BIG is McCain Foods?


you don’t want it to get too hot.”Shane Kingsbury says there is “a lot of

collaboration” between area growers and McCain’s field department. “As growers, we have to make sure that what we’re doing is sustainable. We have to use this same land year after year.”

The russet Burbank potato is the main-stay of McCain’s operation, accounting for 87% of the potatoes the company buys. Growers are notified of the company’s fu-ture needs and can plan accordingly. Rus-sets are “a very forgiving potato,” Kings-bury says, looking at the sky. Due to a mild winter and an early spring, this year’s crop was planted on May 2, more than a week earlier than usual. Though August was dryer than he would have liked, the crop is still ahead of schedule.

Leigh Morrow, director of agronomy, also local, says the ideal summer weather pat-tern for Aroostook potatoes would be less than an inch of rain per week, spread out over the whole season. But that rarely hap-pens. Though Maine receives substantially more rainfall than other potato-growing ar-eas of the United States, it doesn’t fall regu-larly. Irrigation is essential. “One of our big-gest challenges is building water sources, ponds to hold water for when we need it,” he says. “A two-week drought here is just as serious as a two-week drought out west.”

But construction costs for growers to build storage ponds can be prohibitive. “The best places to build ponds might be in wetlands,” Morrow says, “and then you get into the issue of mitigation. We need to engineer a plan for pond construction.”

There’s no crossover, McKenney says, between raw materials on either side of the border; Canadian potatoes are all pro-cessed in Canada, though finished prod-ucts from factories in New Brunswick do come into the United States for sale. And the agronomists in both countries work together, because diseases like late blight don’t respect international borders.

Potatoes can be stored for up to a year. McCain is in the process of replacing a po-tato handling facility, which will be used to sort and size over 350,000 cwt (hundred-weight) this year. The plant’s 23-million-pound and 18-million-pound freezers store finished products.

When potatoes arrive at the plant, they are sorted into four sizes by a new auto-mated sorting system. These sizes may

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IT S NOT JUST BUSINESS IT S PERSONAL.

PRIVATE TOUR


eventually be mixed back together, in proportions speci-fied by the client. For example, McDonald’s may mandate that a certain percentage of its French fries must be more than four inches long. The system allows McCain to con-trol the mix of sizes, or the “size profile,” used in any run for any product.

But before any truckload of potatoes can be processed, inspectors siphon off a 50 to 70 pound sample, and run the potatoes through a battery of tests. The potatoes are tested for color and specific gravity, which indicates the starch content. The tests affect how much a grower will be paid for a load. Potatoes are bought and sold by “hundred-weight,” which simply means 100 pounds of potatoes.

When potatoes enter the plant, they are washed to re-move stones, dirt, and foreign material. This happens in-side a tank in which rocks and sediment sink to the bot-tom, vines and leaves float to the top, and the potatoes proceed through the middle into the production pipeline.

A high-pressure steam cooker loosens the skins, which are then removed by automated brush peelers. Sometimes, a bit of skin is left on. “It depends on the client,” says produc-tion manager Matt Dorsey. “Some like a completely peeled product, and some like a partially skin-on product.”

The peeled potatoes roll past workers who inspect them by hand, culling bad potatoes and any foreign material that’s made it this far through the process. Then they are shot by water cannon through a cutter, and emerge on

the other side of the blades as curly fries, French fries, or some other familiar product. The next step is a blancher, which looks like a huge metal oven, and removes excess sugars that can cause discoloration. After this, battered products are dipped in their special coating. The fries are then dried, fried, and frozen for 20 minutes at a tempera-ture of 23 degrees below zero Celsius.

At the end of this long and winding road of conveyor belts is the packaging room. Sixteen bagging machines whir constantly; rolls of paper morph into freezer bags and are filled with premeasured amounts of fries. Each bag is weighed and sent through a metal detector before being deposited into a cardboard case, which is then sealed by another machine and is placed on another con-veyor, which takes it to a pallet to be loaded onto a truck. A case contains six bags; an electronic board tabulates the number of cases filled per hour per machine. When every-thing’s working smoothly, each machine will package be-tween 350 and 400 cases per hour.

All outgoing product is shipped by truck. But the com-pany has a keen interest in keeping the embattled rail line that serves Aroostook County open. The cooking oil McCain uses comes by train from the Midwest. “Rail is important to us,” McKenney says. “We do not utilize it as much as the wood industry does, mainly because our fin-ished product is perishable, and the quantities have got to go to many different locations.” The rail, however, is key delivery source.

“It would mean a cost increase to us for sure if that rail does cease to exist,” McKenney says. “I know they talk about transfer stations, and those would be okay, but we have traceability issues that come with our cooking oil, and that could force us to go strictly by tractor trailer if the rail does go away.” He explains: “The product is sealed and that seal needs to be unbroken when it arrives here. So the transfer of that from rail to a transfer station and then onto a truck would be a scheduling issue for us. There would have to be more parties involved, and the timing would be much more difficult.”

Keeping the rails in place is important to their equa-tion; an improvement in Maine’s rail systems could mean a cheaper way to ship out product. “There are centralized storages that we could use,” McKenney says, “if the rail was ever to become efficient enough to be able to get to market within seven to 10 days.”

But the plant has been busy saving money in other ar-eas. Following a major expansion in 1999, which included a new French fry line and a water treatment plant, the company focused its investments on energy-reduction

All products at McCain’s Easton plant, such as these curly fries, are “par fried” and then frozen.


Year founded:

1955

Year Easton plant purchased:

1976

Ownership:

McCain Food Limited, Toronto

Creation details:

Founded in Florenceville, New

Brunswick, by brothers Harrison

and Wallace McCain. First

frozen-vegetable plant opened

in 1957 on the banks of the Saint

John River.

Employees (Easton):

522

Positions:

Managers, agronomists, quality

inspectors, mechanics, machine

operators, field representatives.

Plant specs:

Main plant is 560,000 square

feet. Potato storage capacity

is 85 million lbs.; cold storage

capacity is 39 million lbs.

Energy facts:

In fiscal year 2010, biogas utili-

zation was 94%, reducing oil

consumption. A building struc-

tural upgrade completed in 2009

has helped to reduce energy

consumption by 30%.

Distribution:

Worldwide, to fast-food restau-

rants and grocery stores.

Current challenges:

Cost competitiveness with other

potato-growing areas, irriga-

tion infrastructure, late blight

disease management, possible

discontinuation of rail line

serving Aroostook County.

Growers contracted yearly:

74 growers, 56 farm operations,

22,000+ acres.

Variety mix:

87% russet Burbank, 9%

Shepody, 4% other varieties.

To learn more:

www.mccain.com;

www.mccainusa.com

>> Company Brief: McCain Foods Easton, Maine

improvements, and in 2006 reduced its energy consumption by 30% and green-house gas emissions by 40%. Water-use-reduction efforts have reduced water con-sumption by 12% over the same period. Such investments assure residents that McCain Foods is likely to remain a major market for the potato farmers in Aroos-took County for many years to come.

On a warm, cloudless afternoon in mid-August, Shane Kingsbury mentions that his kids go back to school the following Monday. It’s the traditional Aroostook County school schedule, with three weeks off in September for the potato harvest. But times are changing; modern equip-ment in the fields means that throngs of schoolchildren aren’t needed to get in the crop. Some school districts have reverted to a traditional schedule.

“When I was growing up, the ques-tion wasn’t ‘Are you gonna pick?’ It was ‘Who are you picking for?’” says Brianne O’Leary.

“It was a great way to grow up,” McKen-ney agrees.

“The process has become a lot more au-tomated,” Kingsbury says. “There are few-er farmers. Farms are consolidating. Now they have tractors that can steer them-selves by satellite. There are fewer jobs,

but every one person is more valuable.”The river of curly fries back at the plant

will flow long into the night, through din-ner breaks and shift changes and into a new day. Afterward, the line will be shut down for an 18-hour cleanup, standard procedure after a run of batter-dipped

product. By then, one or both of the other lines will have fired up for a new order. The river flows into the 60 trucks that leave the plant every production day (about 280 days a year) and into the American food stream—a river of gold, with its source in Aroostook County.

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McCain Foods in Easton is a mechanized wonderland of ... · November 2010 Maine Ahead >> 31 or any French fry lover, witnessing a 36-hour run of curly fries at McCain Foods is almost