Katjes is the Dutch word for "little cat". Our first product was a little liquorice cat. Everyone liked it so much that the whole family was named after it: The Katjes Fassin GmbH + Co. KG.
The Katjes family was established in 1950 by Klaus Fassin under the name Katjes Fassin GmbH + Co. KG. But our story actually goes back even further – to 1910 – with a recipe for the manufacture of liquorice from Sicily. This is how the production of our little liquorice cats “Katjes” began. By the way, the “Katjes-Kinder” have always been vegetarian from the beginning. In the 70s, we commenced the production of the first fruit gums.
We have three manufacturing sites in Germany: The headquarters are based in Emmerich where fruit gum and liquorice is produced, the sherbet products are manufactured in Remshalden near Stuttgart and all hard boiled candy is made at our transparent candy factory in Potsdam-Babelsberg. Katjes employs nearly 500 people overall, a lot of them are already 2nd generation. The eponymous family is also still part of the team. Bastian Fassin, son of the founder of the company Klaus Fassin, is in charge of the business together with the managing shareholder Tobias Bachmueller.
We even have two! One is located in Emmerich by the river promenade and the other one in Potsdam. This is where you can visit our transparent candy factory. Check it out. We are looking forward to your visit.
This is not entirely true. You can find all brands belonging to Katjes here on the homepage. All other involvement that you might have heard of belongs to one of our independent sister companies Katjes International GmbH + Co. KG or Katjesgreenfood GmbH & Co. KG.
Please click here to find our Anti Slavery Statement 2022/23.
Our most popular product is the Katjes Grün-Ohr Hase aka Brad the Bunny: This sweet foam sugar bunny with its delicious fruit gum ears has been awarded and is simply veggie-licious. Just like with all Katjes fruit gum products, we use only natural flavoring and coloring. The white ones are cherry flavored, the pink ones are raspberry.
The Yoghurt-Gums howeverdo not fall short of our Brad the Bunny. They have a high share of skimmed milk yoghurt powder and have a delicious taste of strawberries, cherries, blueberries, pears, raspberries and lemons. Did you know that our Yoghurt-Gums were created in 1971 as the first product of its kind? And they have been vegetarian from the start. A real fruit gum yoghurt innovation so to speak and even today a true original.
Yay! Our fruit gum and liquorice assortment is entirely vegetarian – ALL VEGGIE! We have been working diligently for years now to create veggie recipes and are now very proud to say: The entire assortment is 100% without animal gelatin. To ensure that this can be seen at first glance we have marked the product packaging twice: With our Katjes Veggie label and with the official V-label of the German vegetarian association VEBU.
Oh no! It goes without saying that our products are packed sorted but even with all due accuracy we cannot preclude that a product from the previous production run remains unnoticed on the production line and ends up in the following production run.
However, there are several hand sorting stations at the end of the assembly line to make sure, that external or faulty products are being sorted out. If that did not happen in your case, we are very sorry. We hope that your next Katjes purchase will be of the usual quality again.