Three years after getting fried in a devastating fire, Penobscot McCrum, which has harvested and processed Maine potatoes since 1886, is selling to McCain Foods.
McCrum, which has been producing potatoes since the late Nineteenth Century when it was founded in Mars Hill, will now be McCain Foods.
McCain certainly doesn’t have the ring to it that McCrum does, but all things must come to an end.
McCrum at least will remain a Maine force, as its farming operation will remain independently owned. McCrum will enter a long-term potato supply agreement with McCain.
The sale includes McCrum’s potato processing facility in Washburn, which was built in 2020, according to WMTW.
McCain said all of the approximately 130 employees at the Washburn facility will remain with the new ownership.
The huge food conglomerate actually has been part of Maine’s potato industry for nearly 50 years, operating its Easton processing facility since 1976.
“This is a natural next step for the long-standing partnership between our farming operations and McCain Foods,” said Jay McCrum, owner and CEO of Penobscot McCrum.
“We know McCain,” McCrum added. “We know their values. We have every confidence they will build on our family’s legacy while allowing us to continue to grow in agriculture, just as we have for more than five generations.”
McCain Foods was founded in 1957 in Florenceville, New Brunswick and is now one of the world’s largest manufacturers of frozen potatoes.
The company, which has over 20,000 employees, operates 49 production facilities on six continents and partners with 3,900 farmers.
In 2022, a massive fire that was sparked by a deep-frying machine destroyed McCrum’s potato processing facility in Belfast and was seen as a possible death knell for the beloved Maine company.
A year later, McCrum said it would not rebuild the facility, instead deciding to expand manufacturing its Washburn plant.
Maine was the country’s top potato producer in the 1940s, a title it reluctantly has since relinquished to Idaho. Today Maine is in America’s top ten when it coms to spuds – a decline but not a capitulation.
