Constantine Polychronis Zochonis (26 July 1894 – 17 May 1951) was a British manufacturer and international merchant. From 1929 to 1951 he was chief executive and primary shareholder of Paterson Zochonis (PZ), a company which then had a head office in Cheshire but was operating mainly in Africa. Under C.P. Zochonis' management, PZ expanded from Sierra Leone into the Gold Coast, invested in its host countries by opening factories and shops there, took over a Nigerian soap manufacturer. By the end of his career, he had expanded the company into three more African countries. Although the company provided employment in Africa, and profit for British trade, PZ's host countries were affected by the company's colonial attitudes under C.P. Zochonis' chairmanship. The company became PZ Cussons in 2002.
Family
C.P. Zochonis was an active part of a dynastic and entrepreneurial business family. His father was Polychronis Basil Zochonis (Greece c.1856 – Bowdon 26 February 1933) a buyer for an African merchant. His mother was Eleni or Elene Polychronis Zochonis (Greece c.1870 – Altrincham 11 February 1943), and his sister was Alexandra P. Zochonis. Constantine (known as "Costi") was born on 26 July 1894 in Sale, Cheshire. He was the nephew of the founder of Paterson Zochonis (now PZ Cussons), George Zochonis, from whom he inherited control of the family business.
In 1908, when C.P. Zochonis was around 14 years old, he passed the entrance examination to the University of Oxford. The family holidayed together. The months of January and December 1914 find his father P.B. Zochonis, his mother E.P. Zochonis, his uncle G.B. Zochonis, his aunt, his sister Alexandra and C.P. Zochonis together at Colwyn Bay Hotel, Wales.
In 1921, C.P. Zochonis celebrated his engagement. At Saint Sophia Cathedral, London on 22 April 1922, he married Octavia Nitza (known as "Nitza"), née Stavridi (Kensington 22 October 1895 – Sumner 3 June 1981); her father was solicitor Sir John Stavridi (1867–1948), the Greek consul-general in London. Among the wedding guests were the Serbian ambassador Mihailo Gavrilović and the Colombian minister. The other guests included Sir Gordon Nairne, Lady Mary Oppenheimer, wife of Ernest Oppenheimer, Lady Nevarte Gulbenkian, wife of Calouste Gulbenkian, Emile Mond, T. P. O'Connor, Pandeli Ralli, Harold Spender and George Eumorfopoulos. The couple honeymooned in Italy. Their son was Sir John Zochonis (2 October 1929 – 30 November 2013), who later inherited control of the company, in the form of chairmanship.
Zochonis' last address was "Westfield", St Margarets Road, Bowdon, Cheshire. He died on 17 May 1951, in Bucklow Rural District, Cheshire, England, and left £253,115 9s 11d (). He was buried on 22 May 1951 in Greater Manchester.
Career
Paterson Zochonis (PZ)
Business context of C.P. Zochonis
Zochonis was involved in the family shipping merchant business Paterson Zochonis & Co., known as PZ (now PZ Cussons). The company was started in 1879 in Sierra Leone by a pair of trading company workers, Zochonis' uncle George Basil Zochonis (1852–1929) from Greece, and George Henry Paterson (c.1845–1939) from Manchester. They set up a trading post, after working for Fisher & Randall of Freetown. The Dictionary of National Biography describes what happened next:
Incorporated in 1884, PZ grew from a trading merchant into a merchant-supported network of retail and wholesale stores across West Africa. Paterson had no issue and the firm passed to Constantine Polychronis Zochonis, nephew of the founder, in 1932. After 1945 African aspirations for self-sufficiency and industrial progress demanded changes from the half dozen or so European firms in the West African trading system. Constantine Zochonis, as chairman and managing director, chose to invest in African manufacturing. In 1948 PZ purchased a small soap factory at Aba in Nigeria.
Between 1923 and 1924, while C.P. Zochonis was a manager of PZ and before he was chairman, the company had to deal with an expensive court case in which shipping companies Elder Dempster, British and African Steam Navigation, and Griffiths Lewis Steam Navigation had allowed "damage to a part cargo of palm oil in casks carried from two West African ports to Kingston upon Hull on the steamship Grelwen". PZ sued them for "negligence in the stowage by stowing palm kernels above the casks of oil and by not erecting a temporary 'tween deck to protect the oil from the weight of the palm kernels and that by reason of this and the depths of her holds the vessel was unseaworthy for the carriage of the oil". PZ won the case, but it went to appeal in the House of Lords.