In recent news, we learned that French's (of mustard fame) indirectly took over the Heinz tomato processing plant in Leamington, Ontario, after Heinz abandoned it. Then Loblaws supermarkets decided not to carry French's ketchup because French's ketchup wasn't eroding Heinz sales, but was "cannibalizing" the sales of Loblaws' own President's Choice brand of ketchup.
There is more to the story though. Apparently French's uses tomatoes grown in the Leamington area and processes those tomatoes into paste. The paste is then shipped to the US, where it is bottled and then shipped back to Canada.
There were nearly 800 employees at the Leamington plant before Heinz shut it down. There are now 240 employees there. Furthermore, French's has said it is looking into opening a ketchup bottling plant in SW Ontario, but it won't be in Leamington.
It’s not known yet where the new bottling plant will be. The obvious choice would be Leamington, Ontario — the heart of southern Ontario’s tomato-growing region, and site of a Heinz bottling plant that closed in 2014.
But French’s president Elliott Penner told Postmedia that Leamington won’t be the site of the new bottling operation.
Highbury Canco took over the old Heinz plant, rescuing some 250 of nearly 800 jobs there, and they are already processing the tomatoes for French’s ketchup. But Penner says Highbury Canco doesn’t have the capacity to bottle the ketchup as well.
Jack's summary:
Many might not have known that French’s version, although using Leamington tomatoes, was bottled in the USA.
Ironically, President’s Choice brand, while bottled in Canada, used American tomatoes!
Protectionism make sense at the local level, but becomes a difficult concept once all these perms and combs are realized.