History

At the end of 1902, Julius Pollak rented a spacious room at Janův Důl No. 76 where he began producing baking powder and other aromatic ingredients using a rather primitive method.

In 1912, encouraged by his early success, Julius Pollak got together with an entrepreneur from Linz, Eduard Haas, to establish Zaječí závody Haas a Pollak. It was then they began expanding the existing inventory, taking up production of sherbet and compressed sugar.

In 1923, Julius Pollak stepped down as a partner, with the company being renamed to Zaječí podniky, továrna poživatin, owned by Eduard Haas. The well-managed plant quickly grew, with further additions made to the production portfolio.

The product range grew especially through the so-called compressed goods, which Eduard Haas began marketing in 1927 under the PEZ mark, which remains globally well-known to this date.

In 1928, the company bought the former A. E. Friedlander belt factory in Liberec at Ruprechtická No. 32, where it launched its machinery production programme and built a technical and sales organisation under the name Továrna poživatin, Eduard Haas, Liberec.

Further additions were gradually made to the production and product range. Manual packing was replaced by machine packing, with packing machines imported from Switzerland and Germany. The most extensive production programme was that of hard candies, soft-centred sweets and drops, as well as toffees, fondants, jelly and, to a lesser extent, compressed goods, dragees, sherbet, baking powder, vanilla sugar, coffee substitutes and preservation products.

As the production grew, new buildings were added and the existing ones extended, most notably a modern boiler room. About 200 people were employed by the plant, which had roughly 13,000 German and 17,000 Czech customers.

After the liberation in 1945, national administration was installed. At that time, the production mix remained relatively unchanged in terms of both range of products and quantity.

In 1948, the Haas company was nationalised and, after smaller plants and business locations were added to it, a new state-owned company, Poživatina, was established with its registered address in Liberec, consisting of 12 plants. As a result of gradual specialisation and concentration of the production, only three plants remained: Liberec, Chotyně and Dvůr Králové.

After 1964, only the Liberec plant remained in existence, renamed to LIPO, an acronym for Liberec Foodstuffs, to be absorbed by the Čokoládovny, o.p. Prague departmental enterprise later on. As the plant evolved, the product range was subject to still narrower specialisation with the production technology gradually modernised to reach its current form.

In 1992, the entire Čokoládovny, o.p. Prague departmental enterprise was privatised, with Čokoládovny a.s. formed as a new joint-stock company using property investments by Nestlé and BSN, later renamed to Danone, and with the LIPO branch plant becoming a part of the new enterprise.

In the following years the joint-stock company was divided between the two main shareholders. The chocolate and candy division, of which the LIPO plant was a part, was assigned to the Nestlé group.

On 1 August 2000, Nestlé Česko sold the LIPO Liberec plant to a newly established joint-stock company. The company continued to produce non-chocolate confectionery and most of the products were dispatched to foreign markets, not only within Europe but also to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Yemen, Korea and Australia.

At the end of 2005, the site was sold to a new owner, MOCCA, spol. s r.o., a company established in 1993 whose business had until then consisted mainly of roasting and packing coffee.

During the first half of 2006, the production halls were re-equipped with technologies for the production of compressed candy and dragees. The company began to renew the production of non-chocolate confectionery with the aim of continuing the 100-year tradition of confectionery production in the region. In the same year, the company received the IFS and ISO 9001 quality certificates.

In 2009, the production of chocolate dragees began and a year later the company purchased technology for the production of biscuits and wafers. Both were gradually discontinued and replaced by new production: sugar-free compressed candy and, since 2014, a modern line for extruded jelly.

This began a major renovation and modernisation of the production park, repair of production halls, warehouses and adjacent areas and installation of a new information system. Nowadays the plant is largely modernised and uses modern technologies in extruded jelly production, tablet pressing and coating. Its production capacities are already among the largest in Europe.