Family fortunes get £81m boost

FIVE members of a Greek Cypriot family in London are sharing an £81.6m bonanza from the sale of their food company. Katsouris Fresh Foods, which makes such Mediterranean specialities as moussaka, taramasalata and stuffed vine leaves, was started in 1993 with a £75,000 bank loan.

It now employs 1,500 people in Wembley and last year had sales of £85m. Chairman and managing director Tony Yerolemou (Katsouris was his mother's maiden name) has sold to Icelandic food group Bakkavor for £102m.

'I will not be splashing out or showing off,' said Yerolemou. 'I do not want to change my lifestyle. I have a nice house already and two cars. I am not interested in yachts or aeroplanes or anything like that.'

Yerolemou, his two sisters and two cousins own 80% of the business, so they have made £16m each. Some of the money is being used to buy a 19% stake in Bakkavor, but that still leaves nearly £70m between them.

Yerolemou, who is nearly 60, has no plans to retire and will continue to run the business. He came to England from Cyprus in 1960, aged 18. The plan was to complete a course in business studies and return to Cyprus to run the family food firm.

'I liked the people here and the way they do business, so I decided to stay,' he said. 'The only trouble is the weather, but you can get on a plane when it gets too much.'

In 1973, Yerolemou married a British woman of Polish descent and he has lived in England ever since. He manages to escape the weather with a trip every six weeks to Cyprus, where his family have been in food for generations.

'We love food and we understand it,' said Yerolemou, who has widened the Katsouris range to include samosas, spring rolls and other Indian, Thai and Chinese dishes.

A new factory is being built in Wembley which will create a further 300 jobs next year. Yerolemou, who is joining the board at Bakkavor, wants to help it to expand overseas.