The book entitled ‘Nick Thyssen: The Story of a Great Innovator to Remember‘ written by Professor Anastasios M. Tamis, which refers to the life and achievements of one of the most innovative Greeks in the diaspora, will be presented at the Lecture Hall of the Greek Orthodox Community of New South Wales (GOCNSW) on Saturday, April 12, at 6.30 pm.
The event is organised by the “Kostis Palamas” Cultural Centre of AHEPA Australia.
“With this event, we honour the contribution to the Australian economy in general, and the food industry in particular, to a Greek immigrant whose passion for innovation and new ideas has made him a role model and phenomenon of commercialism and new ideas in Australia and internationally,” President of the AHEPA Australia “Kostis Palamas” Cultural Centre, Georgios Lianos, said.
“Professor Anastasios Tamis records this very important historical biography of Nikos Theodosiadis (Thyssen), whose entrepreneurship and the businesses he founded and organised have been praised and approved by British and American companies.”
The author will make the introduction to the book and its relationship with the evolution of the history of Hellenism in Australia.
The narration of the biography of Nick Thyssen does not simply aim to highlight the experience he formed during his life, outlining special aspects of his life. This book highlights the life and contribution of one of the most innovative entrepreneurs in Australia and beyond, the personality, the talent, the genius, the charismatic ingenuity and contribution of Nick Thyssen to the history and evolution of the global food industry.
His historical biography is analysed and moves in parallel with the historical events and historical-political situations that marked Greece and Australia, as a country of origin and as a host country, as well as with the evolution of the dominant society, but also of Hellenism.
Certainly, all the immigrants who sought protection abroad, uprooted from their relatives, have more or less written their own history with achievements and trials, which is worth preserving by their descendants at some point.
In the case of Nick Thyssen, we have one of the most inventive figures of the Greek diaspora, a figure of a genuinely genius entrepreneur with pioneering ideas and innovative concepts that have profoundly changed specific aspects of the global food industry.
A farm boy from Valimitika, Aegialia with twenty pounds of pocket money from his brother, having his wife, Maureen, by his side, caused a global revolution in the production of natural juices, fresh fruit salads and soups, when until then the global food industry relied on cooked fruit compotes and canned tin with concentrated and dried juice powder with plenty of preservatives.
Despite the abundance of publications mentioning people of Anglo-Celtic or non-Anglo-Celtic origin in Australia, there are hundreds of personalities with immense contribution who remain unknown or are in question. There are also many Australians of non-Anglo-Celtic origin whose very important contribution will unfortunately never be highlighted.
In the demographically very strong Greek Australian community of more than 500,000 Greeks, with the innumerable national-ecclesiastical and socio-economic bodies, with the more than 1200 community organisations that cover their sports, social, political, economic and cultural needs, there are many Greeks who played a very important role, but their names and contribution have not been recorded. The multifaceted achievements, triumphs, sufferings and tragedies that marked their lives will perhaps never be made public. Many of these immigrants were not even able to write to their relatives in Greece or Cyprus, resulting in their fate being the subject of vague speculation. Many Greeks excelled as skilled manual workers, successful merchants and entrepreneurs, consistent industrialists or important scientists.
The most important thing about Nick Thyssen’s action and triumphant development is that this entrepreneur did not excel by copying others, he was not led to the triumph of success, having imitated the success of others. Most importantly, he never walked on footsteps and paths that others thought of or others attempted first and succeeded.
Nick Thyssen is the one, the only man who thought, orchestrated and implemented his own ideas, his own machines, his own inventions and achieved success through struggles, often with great financial losses. There was no copying with Nick Thyssen.
The next impressive thing about Nick Thyssen is that money, profit was not an end in itself for him, that is, he did not work simply to earn. He worked for the success of his ideas, he toiled to taste the joy of daring the new, and he succeeded. He himself often confessed that he lost a lot of money with his bold and innovative ideas, with his improvisations.
The great thing is that Nick Thyssen never felt sorry for the money he lost. But he was sad and hurt because his goal did not succeed. That is why he always advised: “Don’t stop, don’t be cowardly, when you lose. You have to dare again, get up again, feel strong even when you lose.”
Nick Thyssen will go down in the history of the Australian juice and food industry because he founded, organised, developed and disseminated to both Australia and the rest of the world, for the first time, the industrialisation of natural citrus juice. He was also the man who invented and enriched the markets with fresh fruit salad and soup varieties in special paper boxes that ensured longevity.
The products of the companies he created from the famous and historic Patra Orange Juice, Original Juice Company, Ready Cut Company, Easy Cheff, Procal and at least twenty other companies through which he attempted his innovative program, yesterday and today are on the showcases of supermarkets, covering the needs of hospitals, army and sports infrastructure.
Nick Thyssen’s huge but invisible contribution is that with his innovative ideas he has improved the everyday life of the citizen, he has given thousands of citizens the opportunity every day to enjoy a natural juice and not a preserve, during a break from work, chatting with their colleagues, or enjoying a fresh fruit salad for their lunch, or resorting to a soup for their dinner. Not canned soup, but freshly cooked soup in hospitals and barracks and of course in their households. No matter how simple these may seem, our daily lives are turned and supported by such simple movements.
