UTO Nederland BV, Schiedam

History

In 1777 Pieter Jansen founded a distillery in Schiedam. Jansen's "geneva" was of such outstanding quality that his reputation spread rapidly by word of mouth. And not just in the Netherlands. He soon began expanding to many other countries and developed new products such as liqueurs. Business was booming despite the occasional "hiccup". The company passed on from one generation to the next and it was actually Pieter Jansen's great-grandson and successor Herman who made the company a big success.

Herman Jansen was a little wilful and he made it his business to know everything that was going on in the market. At the end of the nineteenth century an invoice of the glass supplier to one of his competitors was sent to Jansen by mistake. That's when he found out that the glass supplier charged Jansen much more for the bottles than he did his other customers. He was so angry with his supplier that he founded his own glass works which he called UTO. The letters stand for "Uit Tegenweer Opgericht", Dutch for "founded out of protest".

In 1860 another distilling company was founded: Vlek & CO in Delft. Vlek was the perfect partner for Jansen as Vlek was an important distiller in the domestic market, whereas Jansen had a solid position in the export market. In 1972 Jansen merged with Vlek & Co. The name UTO was changed into "Unaniem Tot Overeenstemming", a Dutch acronym for "unanimously to agreement".