Svenska Kakaobolaget (The Swedish Cacao Company) is, as the name directly implies in English, a chocolate specialist manufacturer.
It was started in 2014 by Ulrika Bergenkrans and Fredrik Alverén, a married couple who are enthusiastic chocolate fans.

Summer vacation in 2013.
The couple named the summer of 2013 their "endless vacation."
They visited Österlen, a town in southern Sweden, from Stockholm.
As they were looking for a cafe for fika, instead of a cafe, they found a beautiful red brick school building. It was Österlenchoklad, a chocolate bonbon factory renovated from an abandoned school built in the 19th century.

Three months later, they bought the chocolate factory.
At that time, neither Fredrik nor Ulrika had any knowledge of chocolate.

Their journey into learning about chocolate began with their encounter with "Bean to Bar."
They were amazed by the complexity of the taste and the rich flavors.

They began to delve deeper into learning about cacao varieties, fermentation, roasting, and all other factors that affect flavor. The couple decided it was time to join the craft chocolate revolution and establish their own chocolate factory.

Three months after purchasing the chocolate factory, they established "Svenska Kakaobolaget (The Swedish Cacao Company)."
Today, SVENSKA KAKAO is one of the pioneering craft chocolate manufacturers and one of the largest single-origin Bean to Bar, chocolate bonbon, and confectionery manufacturers in Sweden.
They operate both SVENSKA KAKAO and Österlenchoklad, and still handcraft all their chocolates and confectionery.

*In 2021, the brand name was changed to "SVENSKA KAKAO."

At the time, most companies in Sweden that called themselves "chocolate factories" were merely sourcing chocolate made in other factories and remaking it.

For the two chocolate fans, this reality was unbearable, and they also realized that much of the chocolate on the market was made from poorly processed, low-quality cocoa beans.

The two were driven by a strong desire to understand "what real chocolate is" and to "share the rich flavor of high-quality cocoa beans with as many people as possible." This became their mission.

They embarked on a project to "make their own chocolate from scratch."
Six years later, they became the first bean-to-bonbon maker in the Nordic countries.

They are committed not only to making authentic chocolate but also to sustainable production, contributing to improving and stabilizing the working conditions of cocoa bean producers who are engaged in low-wage labor.

What is Bean to Bar?

Bean to Bar is a style of chocolate that originated in the United States in the late 2000s, where the entire process from cacao beans (Bean) to chocolate bars (Bar) – including the selection, roasting, grinding, mixing, and molding of cacao beans – is managed consistently in-house at the company's own factory.

Ulrika and Fredrik, the founders of Svenska Kakaobolaget, travel the world in search of the finest cacao beans. They carefully roast the cacao beans they acquire and slowly transform them into a handful of chocolate.

Just like coffee and wine, the flavor characteristics of each product vary depending on the type and origin of the cacao beans used.

Svenska Kakaobolaget's original chocolate contains only two ingredients: "cacao beans" and "cane sugar." We are committed to maximizing the unique nuances of each cacao bean.