Canada

The only time I use ketchup is when I'm eating fries/burger/hotdog. So I don't use it often. Do I really need to put that on my fries/burger/hotdog? No. It's really just highly processed tomato sauce with sugar, so you could just use tomato sauce and mix it with some sugar I guess.

Heinz used to make ketchup in Leamington ON, with locally grown tomatoes. They closed it down in 2014, choosing to bring ketchup in from other facilities in the US.

Heinz had also started making mustard, the main product of French's. French's decided to take advantage of the opportunity to strike back and took over the old Heinz facility in Leamington and began making ketchup out of the same tomatoes that Heinz had been using in Canada.

Since then, French's has been bought out by McCormick, and moved production to London, ON. The Leamington Facility is now Highbury Canco, and it does private label manufacturing. Heinz has restarted ketchup production in Montreal, using tomato paste from the Highbury Canco plant, their own old facility.

Meanwhile Primo Foods makes a ketchup, made in Canada. Primo is owned by Sun-Brite, a Canadian company, so that's the trifecta. There's also that old plant in Leamington, Highbury-Canco that does private label/co-pack. Canada has lots of food manufacturing, at places like Delmar Foods, Luda, Hall's Kitchen, Giraffe Foods. This means when you buy a house brand from a Canadian retailer like Western Family or Compliments, there is a decent chance it's made in Canada by one of these private label manufacturers.

Do you have any idea how hard it is to find a pure Canadian? Then you gotta get it into the press whether it wants to go or not, and then the little bugger jams the works with a peavey and it takes forever to repair the damage!

Primo https://www.primofoods.com/primo/index.php

Owned by Sun-Brite, which is independent and Canadian. Fun fact, they make Heinz Ketchup for Heinz too.

Here are the stores that carry it https://www.primofoods.ca/primo/ketchup.php

Tell your store you want them to carry it...they likely already carry other Unico or primo products (both are Sun-Brite)

Can't you just distill it from ketchup potato chips?

Aylmer is a Canadian company that used to make really good ketchup. I'd buy it whenever I found it, but nobody stocked it regularly. Looks like they no longer make it, but this might be a great time for them to start up again.

A) Thanks for trying, every bit helps! And hey, even if you can't buy Canadian, not buying American is pretty helpful!

B) there's a community set up for all these questions and recommendations etc:

https://lemmy.ca/c/buycanadian

I thought French's leases part of the former Heinz plant in Leamington, ON and uses tomatoes from the local greenhouses.

CBC made a mini-documentary about it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=af7Jctuqhcg

Sobeys' Compliment and Metro's Selection and very much Canadian alternatives and they cost the same as heinz normally. According to buy beaver there's also Western Family.

You can make some from local tomatoes, and freeze or can any extra for later. It's a pretty simple recipe, you just cook down some tomatoes and add spices and vinegar.

Covered Bridge makes good chips.

I just saw Munchies again, but unfortunately they're owned by Pepsi. Which sucks because they're really good.