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(Image Credit: Devin Stevens | The Canadian Press)
By The Canadian Press
Business Beat

U.S. case alleging price-fixing advances against Canadian frozen potato giants

Oct 23, 2026 | 3:33 PM

An Illinois judge says a class-action lawsuit alleging two Canadian companies participated in a frozen potato price-fixing scheme in the U.S. can continue. 

New Brunswick’s McCain Foods Limited and J.D. Irving-owned Cavendish Farms, which has an operation in Lethbridge County, were among five defendants seeking the case’s dismissal.

Defendants also include U.S. potato product companies Lamb Weston and J.R. Simplot, along with Circana, a third-party data provider whose PotatoTrack analytics platform the firms allegedly used to conspire with each other.   

The case began in 2024 when grocer Redner’s Markets filed the initial complaint. It was consolidated with similar actions from commercial and consumer plaintiffs in 2025 alleging the potato companies conspired to increase the price of frozen french fries, hash browns, tater tots and other products. 

The plaintiffs cited several examples of the companies increasing their prices by similar amounts at similar times, sometimes the same day, or within days of each other. 

They alleged the industry’s “good ol’ boys network” used the PotatoTrack platform to share sales and pricing information for the American frozen potato sector, with the claimed price-fixing beginning in 2021.

The allegations have not been tested in court.

Court documents say frozen products make up about half of the entire U.S. potato market and the frozen sector was worth US$68 billion in 2023.

The plaintiffs claimed frozen potato prices increased 62 per cent between January 2022 and December 2024. Meanwhile, they claimed the companies’ input costs declined 33 per cent between October 2023 and the middle of 2025.

The defendants, including McCain and Cavendish, did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Friday.

The potato companies argued in court that their costs spiked and compressed profit margins for years during the COVID-19 pandemic, giving an “obvious alternative explanation” for the price increases. 

The judge ruled the argument did not undermine the conspiracy allegations, instead noting pandemic-era constraints could give the companies “an even greater incentive to conspire to fix prices.”

Court papers say Lamb Weston has 40 per cent of the U.S. frozen potato market, McCain has 30 per cent, Simplot stands at 20 per cent and Cavendish has about seven to eight per cent. Together they control about 98 per cent of the market. 

The defendant companies made a joint submission arguing the case should be dismissed because the plaintiffs had “failed to adequately plead the existence of a conspiracy in order to state a claim.”

McCain made additional arguments saying the U.S. district court for the northern district of Illinois lacked jurisdiction over the company and that the court was not the proper venue. 

Circana argued the plaintiffs did not plausibly allege it participated in a conspiracy and didn’t provide any motive for it to have done so.

Circana describes itself as a leading technology, AI and data company for a range of businesses, including consumer packaged goods companies. 

The plaintiffs claimed PotatoTrack provides “individual item level data” for all frozen potato shipments from the four processors to food service customers in the U.S. and foreign countries. They claimed each company receives reports showing their data on one side, and data from the other three companies on the other. 

They claim PotatoTrack reports compile proprietary pricing data on all products sent to food service outlets, such as restaurants, schools and hospitals. 

Judge Jeffrey I. Cummings largely rejected the arguments from the defendants and allowed most aspects of the case under a federal antitrust law to proceed to the next stage in his Sept. 17 ruling. He disallowed a number claims made under laws of various U.S. states.

While the use of PotatoTrack was the main argument of the plaintiffs, they also argued potato company executives are “unusually close for competitors” and could share pricing information by hiring each other’s former employees. 

They cited the producers all belonging to the same collection of trade organizations and sharing co-packing arrangements where pricing can be discussed. 

They claimed the producers sometimes use the same third-parties to store their product and that personnel could check out the inventory and product destinations of other companies in real time. 

The plaintiffs alleged the companies exchanged letters with effective dates of price increases included.

They also claim the companies tried to conceal their communications, alleging that Lamb Weston employees in particular were told to send text messages “to avoid creating emails that could be discovered in the event of an antitrust investigation.” 

The defendants argued that in order for the case to proceed the plaintiffs needed to allege the companies had direct agreements with each other, rather than through a third-party service like PotatoTrack. The judge said that argument was incorrect.

“All told, these allegations support a plausible inference that the information exchange occurring at the same time as historic price increases resulted in those anticompetitive effects,” the judge wrote. 

by The Canadian Press