Undoubtedly, tens or even hundreds of immigrants, who had settled to Australia almost as children, mainly from the early 1880s, managed to emerge with their settlement great figures in the field of entrepreneurship, commerce and industry. Many simply applied well-known methods in specific areas of professions. Others simply copied or modified the machinations and discoveries of others and excelled. Fewer implemented their own innovations in already operating businesses and became rich. Even less were those who pioneered, who made their own inventions, who had their own novel ideas and whose actions changed the face of the economy and food production not only in Australia, but internationally. 

The Nick Thyssen (Nikolaos Theodosiadis) phenomenon belongs to this last category of inventive and resourceful entrepreneurs. He is the man who released in Australia and internationally the fresh orange juice and other citrus fruits products, including the famous Patra Original Juice. He is the entrepreneur who made the first natural soups in the world in paper and later plastic containers for hospitals, sports clubs, barracks with a shelf life exceeding three weeks (until then even cooked food used to be preserved in cans with preservatives). He is the first entrepreneur in Australia and internationally to market fruit salads in paper and plastic containers for the needs of nursing homes, barracks and hospitals.

He is the Greek Australian businessman who managed to create relations of trade and social solidarity with the dozens of large farmers and growers of vast citrus plantations in Victoria and NSW; the man who in times of crisis supported agricultural trade, buying the products of the province at prices higher than those of cooperatives to sustain farmers in crisis.

Nick arrived in Australia at the age of 16 from his village, Valimitika, in the province of Aigio, in October 1951, at the invitation of his older brother, Kostas Theodosiadis, who had arrived in Melbourne in 1949, invited by his uncle Apostolos Bougas, the well-known Paul Taylor, a most industrious person in communal and religious affairs in the early post-war years in Melbourne. Encouraged by Kostas, Nick worked in Greek restaurants and cafés in Melbourne and Shepparton before opening his own catering businesses as milk bar and restaurant owner. Four years later, the two brothers gradually brought their parents, George and Eleni, and their sisters Anna, Evanthia and Panagiota to Australia, whom they married with local Greek immigrants.

Nick’s frenetic and amazing commercial career begins in 1957, when he meets Maureen Elizabeth Vitzdamm-Jones, a prudent and good-natured woman, whom he first employed as an assistant at his restaurant in Fitzroy Street, St Kilda, and subsequently were joined together for the next 60-plus years of marital life, giving birth to and raising three children, Laney-Helen, Becky-Rebecca and Adam George.

The young couple began their tireless struggle in small business, canvassing the initial years of survival, utilising mutual devotion and perseverance, before embracing success and socio-economic consolidation. From St Kilda and Elsternwick to Moorabbin, and from there to Carlton and Brunswick and then to Mill Park, they fought together with dedication and zeal, adopting and implementing Nick’s innovative ideas in business. Sometimes with partners, such as Alec Kaltzovski, a child from Akritas, Florina who found himself as a refugee child in Eastern Europe in the storm of the Civil War, sometimes with their children, sometimes with well-meaning farmers, they set up their own factories, bought huge farms, building or expanding vast plantations with orange groves and other citrus fruits, sometimes farms with their own cattle.

Sixty years of action with novel ideas that influenced and changed the economic life at least in food production, with innovative ideas of Nick to build his own improvised machines, moving belts for processing fruits, special chemical methods to solve the problem of longevity of his products, including soups and juices, adopting special methods in the creation of animal feed, in order to utilise citrus peels as a fertile ingredient to feed the cows. Until the acquisition of the historic Churchill Island, next to Philip Island, the first island where seeds brought by the British colonists were planted, an island reinforced with the artillery guns to protect Melbourne from the sea. The island was bought by Nick and Alec to breed and train horses there and to set up camps for holidayers. However, when the Victorian Government and the then-Premier Dick Haymer requested that the State buy the island from the two inventive businessmen on behalf of Victorians, the owners consented, and the island was returned to the people of the State.

From Carlton, with an investment of 600 pounds they started the most famous fresh Australian Juice, Patra Orange Juice, the first company in the world to produce and offer to the market natural, fresh juice, instead of the until then, concentrated can of orange. It was a company that took off immediately without any initial market averseness, conquering the national and international market, as far as Japan and Greece. Other food companies followed by the Thyssens, including the famous Ready Cut, Acron, Ezy Chef, Original Juice and finally the dairy industry ProCal. British and American owners of multinational companies rushed to invest in these companies, and other firms and ventures created by the phenomenal intellect, the insight vital power that Nick had within him.

“My goal was not the chase of profit, in every new venture I enterprised. My struggle was simply to win. I just wanted the new idea I had for a business to be successful. I just wanted to succeed in everything I did. I also lost a lot of money on ideas that didn’t work. I believe that it takes courage to succeed. And even if you fall, and even if you lose, do not be timid. Perseverance will vindicate you. The goal should not be profit, but the success of an effort, even without profit. Money must be respected, not loved or underestimated,” he would state as an advice to the younger people and prospective businesspersons.

Nick appreciated the love, encouragement and care he received from the broader Australian society. From the noble and humanist Jew bureaucrat of the Immigration Department who helped him bring his family from Greece, reunifying the family; another merciful Jew clothmaker, who offered him the capital to open his restaurant in 1956 in the cosmopolitan suburb of St Kilda; a multitude of Australian and Italian farmers who stood by him and the tens of his compatriot fellow immigrants with whom he initially worked with, accumulating both the experience and the skills in trade. And a plethora of CEO, Managers and associated partners, retained a most respectful communication with him, absorbing his profound knowledge and entrepreneurial ideas, in an effort to imitate or emulate his charisma.

Nick and Maureen stood by their children, protected them and made sure to pass on their love for Greek Australian culture and Greece, to acknowledge the impact that their immigrant father has brought to their lives and the livelihood of their grandchildren.

The book of his life: ‘Nick Thyssen a Great Innovator to Remember‘

The book titled Nick Thyssen a Great Innovator to Remember was released this month in Melbourne in a most artistic style by prestigious Ellikon Fine Printers. In this historical biography the author and biographer depicts the amazing life and activities of this innovative entrepreneur and his broad impact on the local and international food industry.

Starting from the difficult years of the 1930s in the Northern Peloponnese, his father’s emigration to Egypt for ten years, the arrival of his maternal uncle in Melbourne before the Balkan-Turkish War,  the years of war, the years of poverty, the stage of survival in the raisin packaging factories in Aigio, the exodus to Australia, the first difficult years upon settlement, the hardworking restaurant and cafés industries in Melbourne and rural Victoria, followed by the success of consolidation and maturity, always guided by his novel ideas. Other significant historical events are being portrayed along with the commercial and industrial evolution of Nick and Maureen Thyssen.

The difficult years of emigration and colonisation of Greek immigrants (1950-1970), the baptism of their children into Orthodoxy, following the noble urging of their Catholic mother, the family’s relations with Greece and Europe, the development of businesses, the relationship with British and American multinationals, their social life and their love for horses, fishing and golf, Nick’s daily life with his Greek friends in Templestowe and Bulleen, the organised Aigiotes in Melbourne, are some of the topics addressed in the book. Above all, the book registers and outlines Nick’s innovative and inventive talent, his uniqueness and authenticity not to copy, but to innovate, to search daily and painstakingly for new ideas, new ways of doing business, new methods.

The volume Nick Thyssen a Great Innovator to Remember, in its first deluxe edition, has no commercial goals. Its goal is for it to be read by young people and for these young people to draw experiential examples from Nick’s authentic life and impacted contribution, to learn his own experiences, to dare something new, unprecedented, avoiding copying and futile competition. This book will be offered as a gift. In retrospect the receivers could donate to the Royal Melbourne Children’s Hospital. In another editorial, additional details will be given about the launching of the book and its distribution.