United States, February 08, 2010
|  McDonald’s officials are meeting with the Potato Variety Management Institute (PVMI) to talk about potential new varieties of potatoes for French Fries.
Jeanne Debons, executive director of the Potato Variety Management Institute (PVMI), is meeting McDonald’s officials and other officials from within the potato industry in Caldwell, Idaho, Tuesday.
Debons hopes the meeting leads to McDonald’s considering new varieties of potatoes for its French fries. She believes her organization has promising new varieties that will satisfy the fast food restaurant chain’s needs.
“I’ve been wanting to talk to McDonald’s for three years,” Debons said. “It’s very exciting. I really want to make this meeting count.”
The meeting was organized by the Idaho Potato Commission. In addition to officials from McDonald’s, there will be a representative from each of the potato commissions of Washington, Oregon and Idaho and four breeding researchers and scientists from the Tri-State Potato Breeding Program, which is supported by the PVMI.
If McDonald’s were to end up liking a variety developed by the Tri-State Breeding Program, demand for the variety would go up dramatically. That would change the fortunes of the Pacific Northwest potato industry in a big way. Growers would be able to get greater production on fewer acres with fewer inputs.
“There are new varieties that can yield double the Russet Burbank,” Debons said. | | | |
| China, February 06, 2010
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The average Canadian eats 30 pounds of french fries per year. In China, per capita consumption is less than 3½ ounces.
McCain Foods Ltd. is trying to turn the figures for Asia's largest country around.
And there is hope for McCain, whose biggest fast-food restaurant chain clients, KFC and McDonald's, are seeing exponential growth in China - a country of 1.3 billion people.
Just over 20 years ago, McCain felt the Chinese market wasn't strong enough to warrant setting up a french fry factory.
KFC and McDonald's were just breaking into China in the late 1980s and neither were posting figures that would entice McCain to move in as an on-the-ground supplier.
In the mid-'90s, though, business started to pick up and McCain began selling into China seriously.
By 2005, it had built its own potato processing plant to help meet demand.
Now, the company says it is the largest producer and supplier of both domestically produced and imported frozen potato and appetizer products in China.
Terry Bird, vice-president of corporate development and emerging markets, predicts that less than two decades from now, Asia alone is set to match the scale of McCain's entire global operation.
"Last year, we did $6.5 billion in the world with 20,000 employees at 60 factories," he says.
"We see Asia, the potential for Asia, being as big as our whole company in 10 to 15 years' time." | | | |
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