From fish and chips to business empire

Saturday, 3 May 2014

Kypros Kotzikas was born into a goat herding family in a small Cyprus village. BECK ELEVEN meets the man who went on to own the United Fisheries empire.

In one way or another death drives his passion for life. At 70, Kypros Kotzikas is sharp, fit and cheeky.

His father died when he was 3. By the age of 6 he knew he would have to be successful under his own steam.

In later years, open-heart surgery made him look at his own lifestyle and when his wife died of cancer three years ago, he resolved to find a way to make the world a healthier place, one fish byproduct at a time.

Kotzikas sits in his large office on the second floor of United Fisheries, a business he bought in 1974 and one of the top 10 seafood ventures in the country. Back then, it had two factories in Christchurch and one in Timaru. In 1994, he brought them under one roof, creating the operation that now stands in Parkhouse Rd, a deliriously Grecian-flavoured building with columns and high- relief friezes making it stand out in the industrial landscape of Wigram.

'Fish does smell but it doesn't stink,' he says.

'I wanted to make a statement with this place so people realise it is not a smelly business. People look at the front and see it's more like a Temple of Aphrodite than a fish factory. And I think it works.'

At a guess, Kotzikas would think the building is 'the best'.

The fish and chip shop he worked in when he first arrived in New Zealand?

'The best.'

His cooking abilities?

'The best.'

His current project extracting calcium from fishbone?

'The best.'

But Kotzikas' confidence comes not from hubris or conceit but from death and loss.

'You have to believe in yourself, something has to have happened to you to wake you up.'

Rolling a handful of small magnetic balls, he recalls his childhood. He treats the metal balls like worry beads and they click as they split and rejoin. The noise drives his assistant mad.

He was born in Palaichori, a small village in the mountainous region of Troodos in Cyprus.

'When I was born, the people lived off the land. It was simple village life. My mother had nine children. I was the youngest [although three died as infants]. If people were lucky, they ate meat once a week.

'We were shepherds, we had about 30 goats. We cultivated the land we had but I wanted an education.

'I made my mother's life miserable because I wanted to go to school. She needed money for my sister's dowry so the last thing she wanted was to lose a son to school and have to pay for his education as well.'

So they came to an agreement. His mother would pay for the first semester of high school and then he would write to his brother, Andrew, who was living in New Zealand and ask him to pay for the rest. If Andrew said no, Kotzikas would move back home.

Andrew paid.

In 1962, 18-year-old Kotzikas arrived in Christchurch. If he'd had the money he would have bought a voyage home by week's end. Working in his brother's Aranui fish and chip shop was hardly the job his ambitions desired. If he were asked to run to the butcher shop across the road, he would take off his apron and change out of his gumboots.

'Why do you do that when you are only crossing the road?' his brother asked.

'I didn't want to be seen like that. As the kid who worked at the chip shop. I made my brother's life a misery too. I was young. I didn't want to be restricted.

'By the age of 6 I knew I was on my own. At primary school we learned to pray and talk to God. I went to church one Sunday, I prayed. I went back the next Sunday and I asked God a question.

'I said to him, 'if you are the kind person they have been telling me you are, then what did I do for you to take my father away'? I got no answer. So I never went back.'

So while Kotzikas loves the customs and traditions of his homeland, he is not religious. But he remains cautious.

'I'm just not sure about God. I would never say never'.

Kotzikas says he'll cut a long story short. Three years after arriving in New Zealand, he bought the fish and chip shop from his brother and worked to pay it off.

'I had ambitions, I wanted my kids to have what I never had. So every time I saw an opportunity, I took it.'

In 1968, he went into partnership with a Kiwi called Cyril Stratford, a businessman in the wholesale fishing industry.

'He had the knowledge and contacts and I had the energy and did the donkey work. It's been fish ever since.'

With his first wife, Kotzikas had four sons - Kyriakos, Emilios, Andre and Demetrios - all of whom work at United Fisheries. As does one of his six grandchildren.

The space in his large office is filled mostly by a busy wooden desk.

Glass cabinets along the walls house ornaments from his many travels around the globe. A lifetime in business means he has visited airports, offices and fishermen's wharves globally but now it is time for more-relaxed travel.

When he retired 10 years ago, the plan was to live six months in Cyprus, six months here but with his own health problems, his brother's death and the death of his second wife, Mary, after a 32-year marriage, plans were on hold.

Next month, he will travel to Cyprus for three months and visit his precious village where 'everybody is a relation now'.

Kotzikas is adamant he is retired but the evidence points elsewhere. His working hours are shorter but he comes in to work each day to advance his latest ventures, using the byproducts of fish to improve crops and health.

'There is more value in the byproducts than the fish themselves you know.'

Working alongside trusted scientists, Kotzikas has developed biological and organic liquid fish fertilisers for farms to minimise chemicals and he is working on fishbone calcium, specifically for women's health.

'One of the things that inspired me was watching my wife die of myeloma cancer. Watching her go through that, she tried natural therapies, she tried everything.

'When you lose somebody you love or someone you rely on, there are only two ways to go. You either believe in yourself or blame everyone else and that will only let you fail in life.'

Bottles of herbal pills and remedies take up room on his desk. He sees a physiotherapist for an hour each week and also has a 90-minute massage. His personal steam room is just off his office.

'When you get to my age, you have to do everything you can to keep yourself alive.

'I believe that we have created so many chemicals and things to fight disease of crops that we are killing ourselves. We cannot go back 100 years and change everything but there are things we can do to minimise the effects on our health.

'I believe we have upset the planet and I know some people will think I sound strange and stupid but all the oil and gas we have taken out of the middle of the Earth and all the chemicals and sprays we put into the atmosphere, it must count for something.

'Look at the population. Everybody you talk to has, or knows somebody that has, cancer or heart problems. When I was a kid we knew one person who had a heart attack and there were probably two people who had cancer. But we were told there were worms in their stomachs that were eating all the food they were eating and that was why they got so skinny.

'Anyway, now it seems like everybody's got something. I've had open-heart surgery and I had a triple bypass in 2005.

'Now, I look after myself. I take no medicine except one Disprin a day as blood thinner.'

Under pressure from his new partner, Jane Campbell, Kotzikas gave up the roll-your-owns. Still, there is a packet of Park Drive tobacco and a selection of Zig Zag papers in the middle of his desk.

'It's in case I ever need one, I don't want to have to get in my car and go and scramble around to find one.'

He has quit the cigars, though he won't rule out having one if one of his horses has a big win. A passionate lover of the sport of horseracing since the 1970s, Kotzikas reckons it must have cost him a packet over the years.

He's had plenty of wins, though. The best two would be the New Zealand Cup in 1997 with Iraklis and the Dominion Cup with Master Lavros last year.

The track on the training facility at his property sparkles in the afternoon sun. It's covered with crushed mussel shells. Seafood just follows him everywhere.

On his quiet afternoons, he takes long walks with his rottweiler, Inga, and enjoys cooking simple Mediterranean food, hand-picked from the large vegetable patch at the back of his house. He cooks fish too, of course. For the record, his favourite fish in all the world is New Zealand sole.