Ceremony at Fazer

Winner by success - Fazer wins Candy Kettle Award 2013!

In September, the members of the European Candy Kettle Club went to Helsinki to visit the renowned Finnish confectionery and bread manufacturer Fazer. The traditional family-owned company gained great success with several inventions like the Angry Birds wine gum.

Majlen Fazer was obviously really impressed to receive the distinguished European Candy Kettle Award this year. She invited the members of the club and their partners to have a closer look at the confectionery plant in Vaanta. Her great presentation about the company was followed by another presentation held by the managing director of Fazer in Finnland Tom Lindblad. It was interesting to see how the company rose in the past 120 years from its early beginnings, when Karl Fazer started as a confectioner trained by German, Swiss and French professionals. Karl Fazer seemed to sense that chocolate would meet the demands of the people in Finnland right before any other individual.

He started in 1891 with a small French-Russian café in Helsinki. Then, within only six years, Karl Fazer started his industrial scale production. One year later, he opened a new plant in Helsinki. In the upcoming years, the production portfolio of Fazer grew and grew. The company started exporting its products across the Baltic Sea to countries like Russia and later on all over Europe. Until today, Fazer bought several other companies, merged with Cloetta Sweden and split the confectionery part of the group again. But one thing never changed: the idea and vision of quality and responsibility within the Fazer family.

Today, Majlen Fazer leads the company with her own ideas. Majlen is a professional confectioner with plenty of ideas for new products whose passion leads to further successes. Majlen also leads on the road to responsibility, concerning Fazer’s workers as well as environmental and raw material issues. This is why Majlen established several new company goals. By 2017, the Fazer company intends to produce with responsibly grown and traded cocoa exclusively. The company is member of the World Cocoa Foundation and active in supporting farmers in the Ivory Coast.

The most famous Fazer brands are Karl Fazer Blue, a milk chocolate made with fresh milk as well as Geisha, Fazermint, Tutti Frutti, Liqueur Fills, Dumle and the all new Angry Birds range. The Angry Birds portfolio contains wine gums, lolly pops, cookies and even cakes and is the most successful new brand within the company. With Angry Birds Fazer began to be successful in the license business, using its experience in producing high quality products for modern consumer demands. It was a pleasure to be a guest in the Fazer facility in Vaanta as well as in the capital of Finnland Helsinki. Majlen was a wonderful host and she is a worthy winner of the 2013 Candy Kettle Award!