At the end of April, Huntingdon’s Maison Russet was awarded the Large Enterprise FCC award from Les Prix Alizés, an organization that celebrates excellence in food exports. This took place at the Soirée des Alizés which was part of the 2025 Agri-Food Export Group, presented in Toronto by Farm Credit Canada (FCC). The event, which took place on April 29, hosted 275 participants, and was a night to celebrate Canadian food production.
Maison Russet is a company that was founded in 2007 with the goal of creating the best sweet potato fries out there. The chief revenue officer, Stephane Fortin, says that it has been years of hard work. “We started slowly, we built our reputation and quality products. Over the years we have built a strong reputation in Canada, the U.S.A., and Europe,” he says. Since the beginning, the company has expanded to offer many kinds of sweet potato products.
The team at Maison Russet was thrilled to win the award, and Fortin was present in Toronto when it was announced. He says, “The competition is ferocious; we were against really big players in the industry,” and that was surprised and excited for the company to have been recognized in this way. “It’s a long journey. Some days you win an award, but it’s the result of years of hard work,” he says. “Year after year we were able to create a product of high quality and to maintain the clientele even with challenges like COVID, financial insecurities, etc.”
About this years’ awards, Louis Turcotte, the FCC national vice-president who chaired the Prix Alizés jury, said, “The companies selected by the jury stood out for their success in diversifying markets and for the steady growth of their sales year after year. We are truly proud to be able to celebrate their performance, both internationally and in interprovincial markets.”
The team hasn’t had a chance to fully celebrate yet, since they have been so busy with production and developing new projects. In the next few weeks alone, representatives will be travelling to Chicago and Amsterdam for other food conferences to showcase their products. However, they say they will be sure to take time to recognize the size of this achievement.
Maison Russet recently invested 23 million dollars to reduce food waste. This next project will take food scraps from production and turn them into other items like hash browns. “This will help us have a diverse portfolio, keep developing, and help the environment by reusing things that usually are not used … And it will hire people from the region.”
Fortin explains how part of this project includes the development of new products. “This week we had about 10 new products by our research and development team to test to bring to Chicago and Amsterdam.” He shares that they put a lot of heart into the work they do and products they make, and adds, “We’re proud to be Quebecois, we’re proud to be from Huntingdon.”