World Premier for Swedish Premium Liquorice!
It’s the 9th April 2011. Hotel Norrtull in Stockholm, it was a fantastically warm day. The third liquorice festival is just around the corner. Liquorice has become a trend and a soft breeze blows out on Sankt Eriksgatan. Behind the doors, exhibitors are bustling with activity, especially at the booth occupied by the newcomers from Ramlösa in Helsingborg. Ten weeks earlier, there was no liquorice or liquorice factory. A lot will be completed in the very last moment. Martin Jörgensen was still placing the contents of five hundred bags of sweet liquorice and just as many bags of salty liquorice on the stand when the gates finally opened.
– I wasn’t nervous. A little tense about what the people would think, but I was mostly just feeling happy. I thought it would solve itself with everything going on. I didn’t dare believe anything. It took an entire year from that first day before I felt like I could make something out of this, before I saw that the people loved our liquorice and kept buying it over and over.
The idea of producing our own liquorice had been there a while, ever since a chocolate fair in Askersund at Vätterns northernmost beach a few years earlier. Tuija Räsänen, who would host the first Liquorice Festival, thought that Martin should expand his range of premium products in his company, ScandChoco, and be involved from the very beginning.
The range of products has grown larger since 2011. There are now chocolate covered liquorice with an extremely salty flavour and Lakritskungen, a brand which fills the gap between ordinary weekday liquorice and premium liquorice, while still managing to remain gluten and gelatine free.
The liquorice is still packed by hand in the same packs as the original creator, Camilla Tubertini, designed in the hectic Spring weeks of 2011. The production has moved to new premises at Ängelholmsvägen in Helsingborg. There is also a new shop with a special area set up for liquorice tasting. Today, Lakritsfabriken is big enough to make its own exports. Martin believes that quality liquorice is something that is needed in the world. They just don’t know it yet.