McCain Foods has agreed to buy the frozen-potato business of India's Falcon Agrifriz Foods, an export-oriented fry plant in the western Indian state of Gujarat, two weeks after the world's largest French fry maker shelved a planned €1bn (about $1.2bn) factory in Germany, citing excess capacity in Europe.

The deal gives the Canadian company a plant that exports to the Middle East and Southeast Asia, markets that Europe's processors are losing.

McCain did not disclose the price.

The deal covers Falcon's plant at Kadi, in the same Mehsana district as McCain's existing Indian operations, along with more than 450 employees and links to more than 1,000 farmers in Gujarat, McCain said on 12 October. Closing is subject to customary conditions, and neither company gave a timeline for completing the deal.

"India continues to be a priority growth market for McCain Foods," said Pierre Danet, McCain's regional president for Asia Pacific and South Africa. McCain announced the deal as Maninder Sidhu, Canada's trade minister, began a trade mission to India, The Globe and Mail reported.

Falcon sells fries under its own brands, makes white-label products sold under buyers' own brands, and exports to customers in the Middle East, Southeast Asia and Australia, the newspaper reported.

"McCain shares our values and our confidence in the growth potential of India's frozen food market," said Manish Tibrewal, Falcon Agrifriz's director and chief executive.

The plant was opened 17 months ago, in May 2025, by Amit Shah, India's home minister. Its fry line is rated at 15 tonnes an hour, with a 3.5-tonne-an-hour line for other potato products, according to Falcon's opening statement.

Credit rating agency ICRA put the total project cost at 4.02bn rupees ($48mn) in April 2024, before construction finished. Neither company has disclosed how much the plant actually produces.

Falcon Agrifriz belongs to the Falcon Group, a family-controlled conglomerate with roots in shrimp exports.

GERMAN PROJECT SHELVED

On 29 September McCain said it would not pursue a factory planned at Mehrum, in Lower Saxony, "in its current form". The project, worth up to €1bn, would have processed as much as 750,000 tonnes of potatoes a year, the German farm title agrarheute reported.

"This decision reflects current market conditions in Europe, including a significant increase in project costs driven by inflation, excess capacity in processed potato products, and softer demand across key markets," a McCain spokesperson told Just Food. McCain also plans to close its plant at Hastings, in New Zealand, early next year.

McCain has not linked the two decisions. Its statement on Falcon describes the acquisition as a platform to serve "growing domestic demand and key export markets".

In May 2025, Danet told FoodNavigator-Asia: "To meet the increase in demand for fries, we have factories in Asia, including India and China. It's likely we'll increase production in Asia for Asia. This will help us improve lead times, leading to better productivity and supply chain resilience."

EUROPE LOSING ASIAN AND GULF BUYERS

EU exports of frozen potato products, mostly fries, to the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam and Singapore fell 60 per cent between 2022 and 2025, to 68,809 tonnes, according to Eurostat data accessed via Cropli.

Shipments to six Gulf states fell 23 per cent over the same years, to 323,368 tonnes.

[explore products="200410" reporter="eu" flow="exports" partner="PH" view="chart" metric="quantity" years="2015-2025" title="EU frozen-fry exports to the Philippines, 2015–2025" subtitle="Tonnes a year, HS 200410 (frozen potato products, mostly fries). Source: Eurostat"]

The decline has continued this year. Shipments to both regions fell a further 16 per cent in the first seven months of 2026 from a year earlier, and the average value of EU fries shipped to the six Southeast Asian markets fell by the same proportion, to €1,053 a tonne.

In Saudi Arabia, the largest of the six Gulf markets for EU fries, industry sources describe "a massive shift from importing frozen potatoes to establishing a high-tech domestic 'Farm to Fryer' pipeline", the US Department of Agriculture's Foreign Agricultural Service reported in August.

NEW SUPPLIERS

Meanwhile, India exported 277,109 tonnes of frozen fries and other frozen potato products in the year to March 2026, according to figures compiled by the trade site IndianPotato.com.

Five Southeast Asian countries, led by the Philippines, took nearly half of that, and Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Oman more than a quarter. On a calendar-year basis, India's shipments rose by about half in 2025, to about 258,000 tonnes from 172,444 tonnes, by the site's figures.

[chart slug="mccain-india-falcon-agrifriz-india-fries-destinations"]

India is not the only new supplier. China shipped about 388,000 tonnes of fries in 2025 and Egypt about 250,000 tonnes, the site said. Chinese supply cut India's share of Thai imports to 23 per cent from 41 per cent in the 12 months to January.

US fry maker Lamb Weston, which lists McCain among its main competitors, said in its annual report that its international business faced price pressure in the year to May from "a significant surplus in the European potato market; local sourcing in developing regions such as the Middle East, China and India, which affected exports from Europe to those markets; and persistently lower restaurant traffic in key countries".

Some local competitors are vertically integrated, "which enables them to produce potato products at lower costs", the company said in the same report.

Processors are cutting capacity in Europe. Lamb Weston has ended production at Broekhuizenvorst in the Netherlands, and adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation at its international segment fell 54 per cent to $27mn in the quarter to 30 August.

Clarebout Potatoes said in September that its "production capacity currently exceeds expected demand by approximately 14-20%" as it proposed closing a Belgian plant.

McCain has been in India since 1998 and employs more than 940 people there. It recently completed a C$135mn ($97mn) expansion in Gujarat and is planning a further plant in the central state of Madhya Pradesh.