Venco is the longest-established and most culturally central of the Dutch licorice firms. Founded in Amsterdam in 1870 by Daniel van der Meer as the wholesale firm Van der Meer en Co. — from which the modern brand name Venco derives — the firm has been in continuous operation for more than 150 years, has produced licorice from a single principal factory at Hoogeveen (Drenthe) since the early twentieth century, and has functioned, throughout that period, as the de facto reference manufacturer for the Dutch drop trade. Most discussions of Dutch licorice begin, implicitly or explicitly, with Venco's product range, and a Dutch consumer's intuitive sense of "what drop ought to taste like" is, in most cases, calibrated to the Venco standard.
The firm has, since 2009, been a brand of the Swedish-Finnish confectionery group Cloetta, following a complex sequence of corporate ownership changes from the 1970s onward (Wesco, Continental Sweets, Leaf, Cloetta). The change of corporate ownership has not, on the whole, substantially altered the Venco product range or the Hoogeveen production. The brand's identity, packaging, and core formulations have all remained essentially stable through the corporate sequence, and the Dutch consumer's relationship with the brand has been correspondingly continuous.
The 1870 founding
Daniel van der Meer founded Van der Meer en Co. in Amsterdam in 1870 as a wholesaler of licorice products to the Dutch confectionery trade. The firm did not initially manufacture; it sourced licorice from European producers (principally in Italy, Spain, and the Levant) and distributed to Dutch retailers. Van der Meer's commercial insight was that the Dutch consumer market for licorice was substantial and growing, but that the existing supply chain was fragmented and inefficient; consolidation of the wholesale trade under a single Amsterdam-based firm offered improved logistics, more consistent quality, and lower prices than the existing distributed model.
The firm's transition from wholesaler to manufacturer began gradually in the 1880s, with small-scale production of branded licorice products under the Van der Meer name. Industrial production at scale began in the 1890s with the construction of the firm's first dedicated factory, initially in Amsterdam. The firm was renamed Venco — a contraction of the original firm name designed to be more easily pronounced and remembered — around 1900.
The Hoogeveen move
The firm's move to Hoogeveen in Drenthe in 1908 was driven by a combination of factors: the high cost of land in central Amsterdam, the need for a larger production facility than the Amsterdam site could accommodate, and the availability of skilled labour in the Drenthe region (which had a substantial bakery and confectionery workforce dating from the regional sugar-refining industry of the late nineteenth century). The Hoogeveen factory has been the centre of Venco's manufacturing operations continuously since, with substantial expansions in the 1920s, 1950s, and 1990s, but with no relocation of the principal production.
The Hoogeveen connection has become, over more than a century, a substantial part of the brand's identity. Venco's marketing has frequently emphasised the Drenthe location and the regional character of the production, and a non-trivial part of the Dutch consumer's intuitive association with the brand is geographic: Venco is, in most Dutch consumers' minds, a Drenthe product as much as a national one. This association has been actively reinforced by the firm's continued operation of factory tours, its participation in regional cultural events, and its sponsorship of Drenthe-centred initiatives.
The product range
Venco's product range covers the substantial majority of the Dutch licorice spectrum. The firm's principal lines are:
| Line | Position | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Venco Sweet Mix | Sweet drop | The introductory range, soft and gum-like |
| Venco Honingdrop | Flavoured | The classical hexagonal honey-licorice |
| Venco Salmiak | Salted | The standard adult salted lozenge |
| Venco Dubbelzout | Strong salted | The double-salt category at moderate strength |
| Venco Schoolkrijt | Salmiak-coated | The salmiak-dusted sweet-bodied lozenge |
| Venco Drop Toppers | Mixed | Modern multi-variety bag for casual eating |
The product range is consciously broad rather than specialised: Venco aims to be the consumer's default choice across as many drop categories as possible, rather than to dominate any single sub-category. This positioning is consistent with the firm's de facto reference status: a Dutch consumer who buys Venco's salted drop, Venco's sweet drop, and Venco's honingdrop will, across the three categories, encounter what most Dutch industry figures consider the moderate or middle-of-the-range version of each. The firm's position is rarely the cheapest, almost never the most extreme; it is consistently the most representative.
Position in the modern Dutch market
Venco's market share in Dutch licorice has been remarkably stable for several decades — at approximately 25–30% of branded sales by value, with Klene at perhaps 20–25%, Red Band at perhaps 15–18%, and the supermarket house brands (typically produced by Klene under contract) at perhaps 25–30%. This stability is unusual in a contemporary European confectionery market that has, in most other categories, seen substantial consolidation and brand displacement. The Dutch licorice trade is, partly, immunised by the cultural specificity of the product against the homogenising pressures that have remade most other European confectionery sectors; foreign multinationals have repeatedly tried to enter the Dutch licorice market with limited success, and the four-firm structure that dominated in 1970 dominates still in 2026.
Within the four-firm structure, Venco occupies the central slot. The firm has not been the technical innovator (Klene has been more aggressive on the high-salmiak end), nor the commercial expansionist (Red Band has been more aggressive on adjacent categories), nor the modernist (Klene's Autodrop subsidiary has captured most of the contemporary children's-licorice space). Venco has, instead, been the consistent custodian of the central middle of the Dutch drop tradition, supplying the products that most Dutch eaters consider normal and that the rest of the industry implicitly references.
The Cloetta acquisition
Venco's transition to Cloetta ownership in 2009 was the latest in a sequence of corporate changes that began in the 1970s, when the original Van der Meer family ownership was diluted through a series of mergers. The firm was successively part of Wesco (1970s), Continental Sweets (1980s and 1990s), Leaf (2000s), and finally Cloetta (2009 onward). The Cloetta acquisition was, in commercial terms, rational: Cloetta is the Nordic confectionery group with the strongest licorice expertise (its Finnish heritage gives it natural understanding of the salmiak product), and the addition of Venco's Dutch portfolio created a leading position across the wider Northern European licorice market.
The acquisition has not, on the whole, changed the day-to-day operations of the Hoogeveen factory or the consumer-facing identity of the brand. Cloetta has, sensibly, treated Venco as a heritage brand to be preserved rather than as a candidate for substantial repositioning. The brand's packaging, product range, and basic positioning have remained substantially unchanged through the Cloetta era, and the Dutch consumer's relationship with the brand has been essentially uninterrupted by the corporate change.
As reference
The cultural function of Venco within the Dutch licorice trade is best understood as that of a reference standard. Venco's Honingdrop is what a Dutch eater means when they say "honingdrop"; Venco's Salmiak is what they mean by "salmiak drop"; the Venco Schoolkrijt is the canonical version of the form. This reference function is real and is reflected in industry conventions: the supermarket house brands and the smaller producers position their products explicitly relative to the Venco lines, the food press treats Venco as the default comparison point, and the Dutch consumer's intuitive sense of what each drop variety ought to taste like is calibrated, in most cases, to the Venco standard.
This reference function is the firm's principal commercial asset. Venco does not need to compete on price (the supermarket house brands undercut it routinely), or on novelty (Klene's Autodrop captures the children's-market innovation), or on extreme positioning (specialist firms produce stronger or more unusual products at the high-salmiak end). The firm competes, instead, on the position of being the canonical version — the default choice that no Dutch consumer feels they are taking a risk on. In a category as culturally fixed as Dutch licorice, this is a remarkably durable competitive position, and is the principal reason Venco has occupied the central market slot for more than a century without serious challenge to its position.