French’s ketchup may soon be considered the best Canadian food product.
The multinational corporation that makes the condiment gets prepared to announce plans to begin bottling a lot of it in Ontario.
The announcement follows an uproar in the last two weeks that triggered someone movement to purchase French’s ketchup, containing tomatoes grown and processed in Leamington. That forced one of the largest grocery chains in the country to backtrack with an announcement it might stop stocking the product, after claiming low sales.
“We’ve started negotiations having a partner in Canada and over the following week or so you will hear the way we are bottling ketchup there, too,” said French’s president Elliott Penner. “It’s something we are looking to do for sure.”
Presently, all French’s ketchup for consumers is bottled in Ohio. French’s ketchup for restaurants is packaged in Ontario.
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Penner would not say where he’s seeking to bottle the product, but he’s had to eliminate Leamington, where Highbury Canco, which took over the former Heinz factory, bottles, cans and packages many food products.
“We’d like to do it in Leamington, but Highbury Canco is busy and can’t do ketchup there.”
Penner’s promise occurs the heels of the new Mainstreet/Postmedia poll, which finds Ontarians believe French’s ketchup made with Ontario tomatoes, but bottled in Ohio is much more Canadian than President’s Choice ketchup that is created using California tomatoes, but bottled in Ontario.
“The ketchup wars will be in the news earlier this week and we desired to see who Ontarians sided with,” said David Valentin, executive vice-president of Mainstreet Research, which polled 2,318 Ontario residents on March 17.
The poll’s results showed 35 per cent of respondents believe French’s ketchup created using Ontario’s tomatoes, but bottled in Ohio, is “more Canadian” than President’s Choice which is bottled in Ontario, but made with tomatoes from California.
Twenty-four per cent of respondents believed the alternative and supported President’s Choice weight loss Canadian, while another 24 percent don’t think either product was Canadian whatsoever and 17 per cent weren’t sure in either case.
“For now, we’re declaring French’s ketchup the winner of the ketchup wars,” Valentin said. “However, almost 25 percent of Ontarians don’t think ketchup bottled in Ohio is Canadian at all.”
French’s ketchup could be regarded as “more Canadian” if they began to bottle in Ontario, he said.
French’s is a member of United Kingdom-based Reckitt Benckiser Group PLC.
Penner named it “unprecedented” in the business world to have a product’s popularity skyrocket the way in which French’s ketchup did. Within the last three months, Penner has watched the volume of ketchup sales in Canada spike in an annual pace from about 2 million units as much as 18 million.
“That’s an enormous increase and it has led to more farmers (this year) planting tomatoes in Ontario which were are not permanent year,” he explained. “All our food service manufacturing is done in Toronto, so we are increasing capacity and there will be more jobs there.”
Last week, Loblaw Cos. Ltd. announced it had been pulling brands of French’s ketchup from stores because of low sales and protection of their own President’s Choice brands. But a massive backlash on social media and protest by shoppers forced the company to quickly turn back decision.
Penner described the sweeping change to French’s ketchup as groundbreaking evidence of the power consumers hold.
“They have put expectations on companies to complete the right thing,” he explained. “People have said they need a better product which uses local ingredients and never those shipped from around the globe.
“We’re truly humbled by this. You want to make certain we hand back to people about this in the best way we can to complement what they have given to us.”
dbattagello@postmedia.com
