A pharmacist, a fishing port and a liquid in glass bottles.

Fisherman’s Friend began in Fleetwood, the fishing port on the Lancashire coast, in 1865. English Wikipedia says the pharmacist James Lofthouse had a chemist’s shop in the town by then, and that he made a strong liquid with menthol and eucalyptus oil for the men of Fleetwood’s deep-sea fishing fleet, who worked in the cold waters of the far north. The company tells the same story on its heritage page, describing James Lofthouse as “a pharmacist from the small port town of Fleetwood in northwest England.” The name, English Wikipedia says, came from the fishermen themselves, who began to call the bottles their “friends.”

Sources differ on who turned the liquid into a lozenge. The company says James Lofthouse “thickened the tincture and made handy little lozenges out of it,” and English Wikipedia’s article on him tells it the same way. English Wikipedia’s articles on the brand and on Doreen Lofthouse give the step to her instead: she found work in the family business in the mid-1940s, married into the family in 1948, and in the 1950s developed a lozenge because the glass bottles broke too easily. Those articles say the lozenge contained menthol, liquorice extract and eucalyptus oil, and that its shape came from the buttons of a dress she often wore to work.

For years the lozenges stayed a local product. Doreen Lofthouse sold them from a kiosk on Fleetwood’s promenade, English Wikipedia says, and they found buyers among Lancashire mill workers on holiday during Wakes week, the traditional summer break of the mill towns. Until then, the encyclopedia says, the product had been almost unknown outside the fishing community — at a time when the town’s fishing industry was already in decline.

A managing director, a factory and a two-colour pack.

The turn came in the 1960s. In 1963 Doreen Lofthouse became managing director of Lofthouse of Fleetwood. English Wikipedia says letters from holidaymakers asking whether the lozenges were sold in their own towns helped her persuade shops to stock them, and that by 1969 she had convinced the family to invest in a manufacturing site and packaging machinery. The business first moved into a former tram shed and, in 1972, into a 20,000-square-foot industrial unit, the encyclopedia says; the company’s own account describes “a specially refurbished railway building in Fleetwood” as its new home and production facility that year.

The same year brought the look the brand is known for. The company says the move came with “the red and black color and a new label in a bold vintage look,” and English Wikipedia also dates the red and black packaging to 1972. The pack itself began as a small paper packet; English Wikipedia says the paper packets were later lined with foil and placed inside a cardboard carton.

Distribution followed. A particular success, English Wikipedia says, was persuading Boots to stock the lozenges in all its branches. A 1973 enquiry from Impex Management led to the first exports, to Norway, in 1974, and interest from other Nordic countries followed; Germany and Singapore later became the two biggest markets. English Wikipedia credits Lofthouse of Fleetwood with the first sugar-free mint, in 1979, and says 100 million packets were sold in 1994, when Fisherman’s Friend was the UK’s biggest food brand export to Germany. By 1997, it says, turnover had reached £25 million, with 40 tonnes of lozenges made each day for export to 120 countries.

Mints, pastilles and throat sweets.

The seven brands in this group all make mints, pastilles, throat sweets or chews, and they come from the Netherlands, Italy, Britain and Switzerland: Mentos, Tic Tac, Altoids, Polo, Fisherman’s Friend, Ricola and Fruittella. Sugar confectionery brands in general sit at many different points in the trade, from family firms that still carry a founder’s surname to names that now belong to much larger confectionery groups, and a single brand can be sold everywhere from a station kiosk to a supermarket checkout.

A sweet brand’s identity is usually carried less by a single sweet than by a pack, a name and the moment it promises, because the company behind the name may have changed hands, moved its factory or grown far beyond the town where it started. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where its sweets are actually made and packed.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its sweets are made and how its packaging has changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

Still family-owned, still in Fleetwood.

Lofthouse of Fleetwood remains a family company. English Wikipedia says it was headed by Tony Lofthouse, the fourth generation of the family to lead it, until 2018, and that its shares are held by a family foundation and Duncan Lofthouse, its managing director. The company describes Fisherman’s Friend as a family business since 1865, “now in its 5th generation.” Doreen Lofthouse, who led the company from 1963, died in March 2021 at the age of 91, Central Radio North West reported; English Wikipedia says she was appointed OBE and granted the freedom of the borough for her work with the company and for charity.

On where the lozenges are made, the company is direct: Fisherman’s Friend “has always been produced in Fleetwood,” it says, and it gives its facilities as 60,000 square metres, its output as more than five billion lozenges a year and its reach as 45 countries. English Wikipedia gives a 2021 figure of five billion lozenges a year, 97 per cent of them exported, and revenue of £55 million, and says the company has won the Queen’s Award for Export Achievement three times. In the UK the lozenges are classified as a pharmaceutical, the encyclopedia adds, while in other markets they are sold as confectionery.

The next factory is planned for the same town. Central Radio North West reported that Wyre Council first approved plans in September 2023 for a new factory on land south of Windward Avenue in Fleetwood, which the firm bought from Associated British Ports; the company currently works from Maritime Street and employs more than 300 people, the station said, and Duncan Lofthouse has called the new factory a long-term project of five to seven years.

For a design guide, Fisherman’s Friend shows how a two-colour pack introduced in 1972 can carry a small-town product to export markets while the making stays at home. Compare Polo, another British mint brand, and Tunnock’s, a family confectioner that has stayed in its home town of Uddingston. For this guide we use red, black and a paper cream with a slab serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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