★ Cloetta — The grandparent of Swedish confectionery — making candy since 1862. ★
Cloetta.
Cloetta has been in the candy business for over 160 years and quietly owns the back catalogue of Swedish confectionery. Polly, Kex Choklad, Center, Plopp, and (today) Malaco and Ahlgrens all sit under its umbrella.
★ The story ★
Founded 1862 · Sweden
Cloetta was founded in 1862 by three Swiss brothers — Bernhard, Christoffer and Nutin Cloetta — who set up a chocolate business in Sweden. For most of the late 1800s and early 1900s, Cloetta was Sweden's chocolate company, expanding slowly into hard candy, wafer bars and confectionery. The company moved its main production to Ljungsbro, in central Sweden, in 1901 — where Cloetta still has a major factory today.
Cloetta's modern era began in the 1990s and 2000s, as the broader Nordic confectionery industry consolidated. The company merged with Leaf in 2012, picking up Malaco and a deep Nordic catalogue. It later acquired Ahlgrens Bilar through that family of brands. Today, Cloetta is one of the largest confectionery groups in the Nordics — and the parent of a striking number of the candies people think of as iconically Swedish.
What's distinctive about Cloetta is that it's run heritage brands without grinding them flat. Polly still tastes like Polly, Kex Choklad is the same as it was when your grandmother bought it. The company has been a careful steward of recipes that have a hundred years of customer feedback baked in.
★ Iconic products ★
Cloetta's greatest hits
Kex Choklad
Wafer + milk chocolate, in production since 1937. The bar Swedes can identify from the wrapper rustle alone.
Shop Kex →Polly
Chocolate-coated crispy puffs, a Cloetta classic since 1965. No clean American equivalent; the texture is the whole story.
Center
Soft caramel chews coated in milk chocolate — Sweden's everyday chocolate treat, around for decades and still selling.
Plopp
Mini chocolate bars with a soft caramel core, the bag candy Swedes buy by the kilo.
Sportlunch
Milk chocolate with crunchy hazelnut nougat — small, dense, deeply satisfying. A Cloetta sleeper-hit classic.
★ Recent news ★
What's happened lately
Through 2025 and into 2026, Cloetta has been pushing aggressively into international markets — particularly the US, where the company opened its first permanent CandyKing pick-and-mix store in New York in December 2025. The strategy is to bring more of the Cloetta umbrella (Malaco, Ahlgrens, Läkerol, Kex Choklad, Polly) into reach for North American buyers, riding the broader Swedish-candy interest.
On the product side, Cloetta has continued steady iteration — limited-edition Polly Banana Split, seasonal Kex variants, and a refresh of the chocolate-bar lineup. The company has been cautious about messing with the icons; new SKUs tend to be format experiments (mini bars, bag sizes) rather than recipe overhauls.
★ Why Cloetta matters ★
The Swedish-candy context
Cloetta is the brand whose products you eat without realising you're eating Cloetta. Polly, Kex Choklad, Center, Plopp, Malaco's Swedish Fish, Ahlgrens Bilar — they all roll up to the same company, and they collectively account for a substantial share of every Swedish candy drawer.
The 162-year track record is hard to overstate. There aren't many confectioners in any country with that kind of unbroken heritage, and almost none with that breadth of icons still in active rotation. Cloetta's role in Swedish candy is less 'one of the brands' and more 'the chassis under most of them.'
★ Shop Cloetta from Pickmix ★
Direct from Sweden, the way it's meant to taste.
Pickmix Candy Sweden ships Cloetta classics direct from Sweden — Kex Choklad, Polly, Plopp, Center, the heritage line. 75,000+ customers across 20+ countries already know how the real Swedish versions taste; yours can join them.