Flurer Smokery Ltd. Relocated From Campbell River To Process And Smoke West Coast Product
PORT ALBERNI – Flurer Smokery Ltd. has landed on the Port Alberni waterfront after over 10 years in Campbell River, and they envision a bright future processing and smoking west coast fish and seafood.
Kelly and Brian Flurer own and operate Flurer Smokery Ltd.
Kelly Flurer, who owns the company with husband Brian, says their location, at 300-3140D Harbour Road – the former Port Fish building, now known as Dock Plus – means docking fishboats are just 40 feet away from their front door.
“It’s quite an opportunity for a number of businesses in the community to have a federally registered building to operate out of,” she says. “For us, we’ve always done a lot of wild and farmed fish, but also we’ve done a lot of custom work. We see great potential here working within the industry, with First Nation bands around the island, sport fishers and aquaculture companies.”
Flurer Smokery Ltd. closed their Campbell River operation on January 15, and began preparing for the move to Port Alberni. Then COVID-19 struck, which delayed renovations in their new location, for which they obtained their federal certification two months ago.
“A lot of our regular customers would have been closed through COVID, so we wouldn’t have had a lot of sales anyway,” she notes. “The down-side was we couldn’t get set up until July 1, as the crews were delayed.”
Flurer Smokery Ltd. does custom, wholesale and retail work, everything from primary processing to value-added and ready-to-eat, as well as smoked products. They are mainly focused on fin fish, including all different species of salmon, halibut, tuna, ling cod, black cod (sable fish), and even sturgeon.
Sturgeon is being grown at a little hatchery on Great Central Lake, after acquiring smolts from Vancouver Island University, “so they’re looking to having us do their processing here.”
“We have a product called FINS – it’s our version of a nugget of smoked salmon,” she adds. “Most companies cut little squares and call them nuggets, but we cut ours into triangles and call them FINS. We’ve had a really great response.”
Now that they’ve relocated, Flurer says they plan on focusing on what they did originally: The smoking of fin fish.
“We will eventually get back into shellfish, oysters, mussels. . .,” she says. “Native bands come to us to have us smoke their fish. That’s a real compliment, that’s for sure.”
Seafood shops, bakeries, and sushi chefs utilize their products. Everything they do is hand-cut and hand-boned, and it’s all local.
“It’s really a labour of love for us,” she adds. “We put love in every bite, and our customers tell us they can taste the love in every bite. That’s our slogan.”
Flurer Smokery Ltd. is nationally and internationally certified, so they can ship product across Canada, the United States and throughout the world.
Dock Plus also has a blast freezer, storage space and ice sales, which Flurer Smokery Ltd. will be managing, besides their regular operations.
“Now we can produce the ice right here on the dock and get them right out of the ice house and straight into the boat. It will give the fishermen a chance to pay a little less for ice, because they’re not having it shipped into town by truck.”
They currently have five employs and anticipate having as many as 15-20 by mid-summer next year as volumes increase.
“We feel really optimistic. We feel that now that we’re in the Port Alberni area, we have a lot more access to the wild fishery right at our front door, and we can buy direct from the fishermen without going through brokers and other companies. We should be a lot better positioned with a broader range of products we can offer.”