Business titan overcame early scars

INDUSTRIALIST

2-1-1913 - 3-7-2009

VICTOR Smorgon, who survived a series of cataclysmic upheavals that racked the Russia of his childhood to become one of Australia's most successful industrial entrepreneurs, has died peacefully at his home in South Yarra. He was 96.

Moulded, yet never broken by the hardships he experienced, Smorgon grew in his adopted county to head a family conglomerate estimated to be worth about $1.5 billion when it was broken up in 1995. The extended Smorgon family is now believed to be worth about $2.2 billion.

Smorgon was one of four siblings born to Naum (Norman) and Tzippa in the small town of Heidelberg in an area of the Ukraine settled by Germans. His father was from a long line of butchers, but he, too, had an entrepreneurial streak, which Victor admired all his life.

Victor was scarred by his childhood in more than one way. When he was five a samovar of boiling water spilt all over him, nearly killing him and leaving lasting scars to two-thirds of his body. He was emotionally scarred by the violence, political uncertainty and famine that accompanied the Russian revolution and civil war. He saw men in chains being led, singing, to their execution, and he witnessed a man lynched when he was discovered to be selling sausages made from human meat. Cannibalism was not uncommon during the famines that accompanied the Russian civil war.

He told an interviewer that even a handful of sunflower seeds seemed delicious and nourishing in those times. He remembered being always hungry and how his family was devastated when their cow was stolen; his father had traded a piano for the nourishment that the cow provided. In later life he confessed that no matter how successful he became he could still wake up in the mornings fearing that all he built up might disappear.

His father decided to emigrate when Stalin came to power and a school teacher told Smorgon's sisters she had to report everything her parents said at home. Fifteen members of the extended family managed to leave with proper papers - and money hidden in the heels of their shoes. They arrived at Port Melbourne on a converted troopship in 1927.

Smorgon's father, Norman, had remarried just before they left, and leaving their paralysed mother behind was a huge wrench for the children; the family brought her to Australia after they had established themselves.

Smorgon's business life began in a small kosher butcher shop in Lygon Street, Carlton, where he worked with his father and uncles. However, his vision was much broader than that and once he became influential in the family enterprise it expanded into meat exporting and eventually a wide range of manufacturing. In recognition of his native leadership skills, the family appointed him their leader and patriarch. He led them on an adventure that saw the family compete with major public companies such AMP (now Amcor), BHP and ACI. By the time it was broken up Smorgon Consolidated Industries, as the extended family company was known, had operated in glass, plastics, steel, paper and chemicals as well as the family's signature meat trade.

By 1995, the Smorgon enterprise had become too large and unwieldy for it to continue in private ownership. But while a split was a rational thing to do it was something that pained Smorgon. His dream was to see the company and the family move on through the generations in the mould of the Rothschild banking family. This ambition was forged in childhood in Russia where he saw his father take advantage of the new freedoms delivered to Jews by the Russian revolution to move into significant businesses. The last part of the empire, Smorgon Steel, was sold to OneSteel in 2007.

Besides developing his entrepreneurial skills, Smorgon also became a prominent philanthropist, giving generously to hospitals, schools and the arts in a personal "payback" to a country he was forever grateful too for the opportunities it provided him and his clan.

This was borne out with the National Gallery of Victoria hailing him yesterday as one of its greatest philanthropists. Last year alone, he and his wife, Loti, gave the NGV a gift of more than $15 million for its Masterpieces for Melbourne fund-raiser.

Smorgon obviously had an early affinity for art, because he made a promise to Loti (nee Kiffer) when they married in East Melbourne in 1937 that one day he would buy her a Renoir painting. He kept that promise in 1978 when he went to New York and bought Coco with Fan, which was stolen from their home in 1980 and later recovered in The Netherlands.

Smorgon never really retired. After the break-up of Smorgon Consolidated Industries, he formed the Victor Smorgon Group with his immediate family, led by his grandson Peter Edwards. The company invested in a range of industries including tuna fishing, leather, retail and chemicals. He continued his lifelong passion for recycling by investing in plastics recycling, and converting carbon dioxide wastes from coal-fired power stations into biodiesel. He also funded his grandchildren and other entrepreneurs into new businesses.

Appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia for his service to art in 1990, he was elevated in 2007 to a Companion in the Order of Australia (AC).

Smorgon is survived by Loti, his wife of 72 years, daughters Ginny, Bindy, and Vicki, 15 grandchildren and many great-grandchildren. Another daughter, Sandra, died in 2007.