Quest for the perfect potato pays off for McCain Foods in India

India’s love affair with the french fry is so intense that the Canadian potato giant is injecting another $69 million on top of its current $37 million investment into greatly increasing output at its plant in Mehsana, which only opened five years ago.

Having captured nearly 80 per cent of the country’s frozen potato market since then, McCain Foods India’s current output of 43,000 tons of potatoes a month cannot come close to keeping up with demand.

McCain’s persistence, ingenuity and the success it has had in Gujarat – which has nearly twice as many people as Canada – could provide a road map for Canadian companies trying to break into India’s $2-trillion-a-year market.

The opportunities are so big that Prime Minister Stephen Harper is leading a trade delegation on a four city tour of India that began on Sunday in New Delhi.