French’s ketchup to be bottled in Canada within a week, company president says

French’s ketchup may soon be considered the best Canadian food product.

The multinational corporation which makes the condiment is getting ready to announce plans to begin bottling some of it in Ontario.

The announcement follows an uproar in the last two weeks that triggered a consumer movement to buy French’s ketchup, containing tomatoes grown and processed in Leamington. That forced one of the largest grocery chains in the country to backtrack on an announcement it would stop stocking the merchandise, after claiming low sales.

“We’ve started negotiations with a partner in Canada and over the following week or so you’ll hear the way we are bottling ketchup there, too,” said French’s president Elliott Penner. “It’s something we’re looking to do without a doubt.”

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 looking to bottle the product, but he’s had to eliminate Leamington, where Highbury Canco, which took control of the former Heinz factory, bottles, cans and packages many foods.

“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 a new Mainstreet/Postmedia poll, which finds Ontarians believe French’s ketchup created using Ontario tomatoes, but bottled in Ohio is much more Canadian than President’s Choice ketchup which is made with California tomatoes, but bottled in Ontario.



“The ketchup wars will be in this 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 that is bottled in Ontario, but created using tomatoes from California.

Twenty-four per cent of respondents believed the opposite 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 the time being, we are declaring French’s ketchup the winner from the ketchup wars,” Valentin said. “However, almost one in four Ontarians don’t think ketchup bottled in Ohio is Canadian whatsoever.”

French’s ketchup might be regarded as “more Canadian” when they began to bottle in Ontario, he said.

French’s is a member of United Kingdom-based Reckitt Benckiser Group PLC.



 

Penner called it “unprecedented” in the industry world to have a product’s popularity skyrocket the way French’s ketchup did. In the last 3 months, Penner has watched the volume of ketchup sales in Canada spike in an annual pace from about two million units up to 18 million.

“That’s a huge increase and it has led to more farmers (this season) planting tomatoes in Ontario that were are not permanent year,” he said. “All of our food service manufacturing is performed in Toronto, therefore we are increasing capacity there will be more jobs there.”

Last week, Loblaw Cos. Ltd. announced it was pulling brands of French’s ketchup from stores due to low sales and protection of its own President’s Choice brands. But a massive backlash on social media and protest by shoppers forced the organization to quickly reverse the decision.

Penner described the sweeping change to French’s ketchup as groundbreaking evidence of the ability consumers hold.

“They’ve put expectations on companies to do the right thing,” he said. “People have said they want a better product which uses local ingredients and not those shipped from around the world.

“We’re truly humbled by this. You want to make certain we hand back to people on this within the easiest way we can to complement what they have provided to us.”

dbattagello@postmedia.com