at a glance
For 95 years, the story of Papastratos lived in scattered archives, in photographs stored away, and in memories passed from one generation of workers to the next. It had never been recorded on film. To mark its 95th anniversary, Papastratos entrusted Danezis Stories with designing the narrative strategy and producing its first documentary. Built on archives research and dozens of interviews with employees, retirees, executives and descendants of the founders, many speaking on camera for the first time, the film traces a century of Greek industrial history: from four orphaned brothers in Agrinio during the Great Depression to to a subsidiary of Philip Morris International that exports to 30 markets.
*This audiovisual material has the sole purpose of preserving, disseminating and perpetuating the history of the company, which forms part of Greek industrial history. As such, it includes references and historical archival material relating to former products of the company that are no longer in circulation, in the context of documenting its historical journey. These references do not constitute the promotion or advertising of tobacco or nicotine products.
Agrinio - Where the Story Begins
Agrinio is where it all began. In the early 20th century, the tobacco grown in the hills of Aetolia-Acarnania was among the most sought-after in the Mediterranean, drawing buyers from Hannover, Amsterdam and Cairo. Thousands of families lived off these leaves. Among them, four orphaned brothers from a large local family: Epaminondas, Ioannis, Sotirios and Evangelos Papastratos. They founded their first trading company here in 1906. They built warehouses that became landmarks of the city. They funded schools, a park, scholarships abroad. We filmed in Agrinio for days. In the old tobacco warehouses, on the streets of the city, with the people who still remember when the smell of tobacco was the smell of work.
Zapanti - Where the Leaves Still Pass Through
Just outside Agrinio, in the area of Zapanti, stands one of the largest tobacco storage complexes in Europe. The first warehouse was built in 1978. Two more followed, in 1982 and 1994. Today the complex covers 60,000 square meters and operates as a logistics hub for Philip Morris International, supplying tobacco to the Papastratos plant in Aspropyrgos and to PMI subsidiaries across the continent. It is PMI's only proprietary warehouse facility of its kind worldwide. Nearly a century after four brothers traded their first leaves out of Agrinio, the city remains an active link in the company's supply chain.
The Retirees
The Papastratos Retirees Association has around three hundred members. They worked in the Piraeus factory, in sales, in the Agrinio warehouses. They left the company years ago. They never left each other. They remember Tassos Papastratos walking the corridors at Christmas, greeting everyone by name. They remember the football team that competed against the other Piraeus factories. They remember the New Year's parties on the factory floor, with music brought in for the occasion. They remember the 2003 acquisition and the difficult years that followed. When the association gathers today, more than a hundred people fill a single hallway. They sit together. They talk. For a few hours, the factory floor comes back.
Aspropyrgos - Where the Story Continues
When Papastratos moved from Piraeus to Aspropyrgos in 2008, it left behind seventy-seven years of factory life and walked into something built for a different century. The new plant sits on the western edge of Attica. Twelve manufacturing lines today, sixteen planned by 2028. Four generations of workers under the same roof. Ninety percent of what leaves the plant goes abroad, to more than thirty markets. Japan alone takes the largest share. Since 2017, total investment has reached 700 million euros, with a fourth expansion phase underway.
IQOS and the Transformation
In 2016, IQOS was launched in Greece. A year later, Papastratos made a decision that broke with eighty-seven years of company history: it would stop making cigarettes. The transition took twelve months. PMI invested 300 million euros. The workforce was retrained on new machines, new materials, new processes. In March 2018, the first heated tobacco stick rolled off the line at Aspropyrgos. The plant became the second facility in the world dedicated exclusively to IQOS. Four hundred new jobs were created in the middle of a decade when Greece had lost a third of its workforce. Greece now ranks among the top three European countries in this transition.
The People Behind the Story
Behind every machine, every floor, every shipment, there are people. The history of Papastratos is the history of its workforce. Four brothers in Agrinio. The thousands who passed through the Piraeus factory between 1931 and 2008. The retirees who still gather to share what they lived together. The men and women on the Aspropyrgos floor today, some of them children of former employees, working alongside engineers who joined after the IQOS transition. Different generations. The same values. That continuity is one of the reasons Papastratos has been named Top Employer in Greece for twelve consecutive years. As Tassos Averof, grandson of Ioannis Papastratos, put it: at Papastratos, people play for the jersey. For ninety-five years, that jersey has been worn with pride. apastratos entrusted this story to us. We told Papastrato's story with the honesty it deserves.
