LEAD: “Pavlides” is a name loaded with sweetness in the Greek chocolate vocabulary. In 1852, the Pavlides family manufactured the first domestic chocolate. Today over a dozen products with their name are available to chocoholics, from dark Health Chocolate and Gioconda bon bons (in their respective blue and Mona Lisa wraps) to Lacta , Greece’s best-selling milk chocolate.

Kraft inherits legacy
Though it’s managed to stay among top players of the Greek market, Pavlides is about to disappear as a legal entity. By June 2004, Pavlides Ltd will have been fully absorbed by Kraft Foods Hellas . “It’s a legal formality,” explains Kraft Foods Hellas’ Corporate Affairs Manager Evie Dimitrakaki. In 1987 Yorgos Pavlides sold the company to Swiss coffee/ confectionary company Jacobs Suchard . With no heirs, Pavlides wanted the family legacy to live on through the international corporation.

In 1991, Jacobs Suchard Pavlides holdings were acquired by Kraft , which had taken over Jacobs Suchard the previous year. In 2001, Pavlides Confectionary exited the Athens Stock Exchange (ASE), in a buy-out by Kraft. Last year, it was de-listed from the ASE.

The decision to merge the two legal entities into one was taken unanimously by the company’s general assembly in November. It will become final after the assessment of both Kraft Foods Hellas and Pavlides accounts. This streamlining is expected to benefit from a new law offering tax benefits for such mergers.

Pavlides brand power
Dimitrakaki is quick to remind chocolate lovers that nothing will change for them. The renovated central Athens factory on Pireos Street, dating back to the 1920s, will keep pumping out all Pavlides chocolates. The brand name will endure. Benefiting from a business dating back to 1841, it simply has greater power in the Greek market than Kraft could “for generations”. Pavlides is a name associated with old Athens and chocolate for Greeks, Dimitrakaki points out. By contrast “Kraft” means “mayonnaise” or “cream cheese” to local consumers.

New Pavlides varieties will continue to appear on the competitive Greek chocolate market. Greeks consume about 25,000 tonnes of chocolate a year, according to a recent ICAP study. The report says that the increase in imports (mostly from EU countries) to over 33% of the market share in the past decade has put the pressure on the handful of major local producers (like Pavlides and Ion ) to constantly create new products.

Recent years have seen the advent of successful Pavlides Almond and Pavlides Sensations; the Pavlides name is also on trendy products like super-sweet 3 Bit chocolates and Snack Pack mini-bites. According to Kraft Foods Hellas’ public relations department, 2004 may usher in several new Pavlides products.