Kalev (confectioner)
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| Subsidiary of Orkla Group | |
| Founded | 1806 |
| Headquarters | Lehmja, Rae Parish, Estonia |
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Area served
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Estonia |
| Website | www.kalev.eu |
AS Kalev (2006–2012 Kalev Chocolate Factory AS) is an Estonian confectionery company. The company can trace its origins back two hundred years, the business that preceded the Maiasmokk cafe was founded in 1806, and is now owned by Kalev. The Kalev company is now a part of the industrial conglomerate Orkla Group. Since 2003, it has been based in Põrguvälja near Jüri, Rae Parish, Harju County.
The birth of the Estonian confectionery industry dates back to 1806 when a pastry cook, Lorenz Caviezel, opened a confectionery business in Tallinn at Pikk Street, where the Café Maiasmokk (Sweet Tooth) is located.
In 1864, the business, which had changed hands many times, came into the possession of Georg Johann Stude. After ten years of operation, Stude decided to expand the business: he bought a neighbouring house and in place of these two houses constructed a new and more solid building, which is still there.
Out of Stude’s production, marzipan figures and hand-made chocolate candies were in especially high demand. Stude’s sweets were known outside Estonia. Thus, for example, the court of the Russian tsar was a regular customer at the turn of the 20th century.
Recipes and working methods originating from Stude’s confectionery are still held in great esteem in today’s Kalev – to this day the marzipan figures are hand-made candies.
At the beginning of the 20th century there were other pioneers of the confectionery industry in Tallinn that could be considered as the predecessors of Kalev. Perhaps one of the most renowned was Kawe confectionery, founded in 1921 by brothers Karl and Kolla Wellner at Müürivahe Street 62. Kawe's products, the greatest confectionery in Estonia, were well known in Estonia and abroad, and the company exported a significant share of its output to destinations such as the United States, England, Tunisia, Morocco, France, India and China.
Of other big sweet producers of the time, the factories of Ginovker, Brandmann and Klausson should also be mentioned. At the end of the 1930s, Kawe and these three confectioneries employed 75% of all Estonian confectionery workers. Competing with big factories were a number of smaller enterprises: Riola, Endla, Eelis, Efekt and others.
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Wikipedia