January 1, Factory Workers Find WWII Grenade Among Potatoes

Workers at a French fry factory in New Zealand found a hot potato: an inert World War II-era training grenade.

Employees working the night shift at the Mr. Chips factory said they received a 28-ton shipment of russet potatoes from a farm in Matamata.

At first, they thought the grenade was a mud-covered potato or an oddly-shaped stone.

“It looked very much like a muddy potato originally,” said Roland Spitaels, the factory’s operations manager.

Spitaels said the incident was the first of its kind in the factory’s 30-year history.

“The guys were really calm and collected and they reacted in an extremely professional manner,” he added.

Factory workers contacted the police, who then reached out to the New Zealand Defense Force’s explosive ordinance disposal team.

The bomb squad found that the object was a World War II-era hand grenade known as a Mills bomb. After an x-ray, they determined that it was a non-explosive grenade, likely used for training purposes.

Spitaels said he hopes police will return the grenade, so they can display it in the Mr. Chip’s factory’s “trophy room.”

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Grenade found among the spuds on chip factory conveyor belt