When you consider all our farmers and our people (we employ around 2000 people in the UK), we have a pretty big community. That means we have a lot of responsibility too. We get involved with our community locally in lots of ways, including the McCain Community Fund, which contributes to good causes.
We have to confess we’re passionate about potatoes. And like anyone who loves what they do, we want to tell everyone about it. It looks like there’s a need for this: the British Heart Foundation recently discovered that one in three UK children didn’t know that chips come from potatoes.
To help put this right, we devised The Potato Story: a fun, interactive account of a potato’s journey from farm to fork. It’s purely educational, there’s no McCain branding on any of the materials.
A fantastic milestone for McCain in 2008 has been becoming the principal partner for UK Athletics. We’re working with UKA to make Britain healthier. That’s why we’re investing £5 million in the UK athletics talents of tomorrow, as well as £5 million in our Track and Field campaign which aims to bring the enjoyment and benefits of athletics to everyone.
One of the major ways we support our local communities is through the McCain Community Fund. We set it up to provide funds for good causes and initiatives in three main areas: youth, education and healthy, balanced lifestyles. To find out more, please email communityfund@mccain.co.uk
Our passion for potatoes led us to devise an (unbranded) educational programme for schools – The Potato Story. We worked together with teachers and educationalists to make sure the programme is relevant to the curriculum and useful for teachers. We also wanted it to be fun – bringing The Potato Story to life in an engaging, interactive way which children will relate to as well as learn how their food gets from field to fork.