Our Heritage
The history of De Drie Mollen dates back to 1818, when predecessors of the involved families, Mr. Sweens and his family, established De Drije Swarte Mollen, a coffee and tea manufacturing company based in ‘s-Hertogenbosch (Den Bosch) in the south of the Netherlands. By the late 1900s, Drie Mollen had begun its development into an international coffee roasting business.
By the 1990s, five leading tea and coffee companies had joined the original founding Sweens family and the business continued to grow and develop.
By the year 2000, private equity funds, started to participate in De Drie Mollen. At that time De Drie Mollen was an international company engaged in the production and marketing of coffee and tea, with operating units in the Netherlands, Germany, France, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. The company was one of the largest coffee roasters in Europe and the market leader within the private label sector. De Drie Mollen was, after Douwe Egberts, the second largest overall player in the Dutch coffee market. Drie Mollen consisted of a network of specialized coffee companies and combined a strong local-for-local approach with efficient and large-scale roasting facilities. The company’s turnover was approximately €300 million in 2007 and it generated an annual production of over 50,000 tonnes.
Eventually, in 2012, the business was sold to United Coffee.
Jan Niessen