Pantazatos Cheese Factory

On the road from Argostoli and 5 km before we reach Skala, reaching the village Neatness, in our right hand there is one cheese shop with the sign "The Sheep". It is so small, and if you go in to buy it, you will see in its window a lot of cheese, yogurt and various dairy products. This small shop, however, hides in its premises, a large cheese factory, the Pantazatos Cheese Factory, with all the latest specifications for the production, certification and packaging of a state-of-the-art dairy.

Soul of the Giannis Pantazatos, a big, smiling man, who took over the job and expanded it, when his father, who in 1981 had built the unit, left the "crab", as they say cancer in Kefalonia. Young and active, Giannis is not afraid of work, on the contrary, he rushes to build the best cheese factory. He enters the NSRF for a subsidy, "until I got it, they took my soul, but I got it!", He brings the latest technology machines from Italy, and taking every day the milk (sheep and goat) from the shepherds with whom he works, produces 500 tons cheese products: feta, kefalotyri, ladotyri, yogurt, pretzel, etc.

The production process of the dairy extends in a vertical arrangement, three floors with thick concrete walls protect it from the scourge of Kefalonia - earthquakes -, while it has taken care - it says with pride - for the recycling of milk waste. "I like everything to be done properly. "I do not like half the jobs."

The Dairy Products gives them to shops and restaurants on the island, but most go to Athens, to Vasilopoulos. "I give it to Vasilopoulos, because I also milk the birds!", He laughs, making a pun with the well-known advertisement of the supermarket.

But the household of Pantazatos is not limited to the production of his dairy.

"Come out and see my diamonds," he says. And he shows us parked two large glittering tank trucks, one red and one blue, carrying the milk. "These are the Red Diamond and the Blue Diamond, they already write it! Here is my son, who leads one ", introduces us to Spyros. His other son, Nikos, will be coming soon. His wife Ioanna, smiling, says goodbye to us. "It is a pity that my mother-in-law, Mrs. Panagiota, is not here. You would know her too ".

Pantazatos Cheese Factory, a tidy family business, a model in crisis Greece,