Bundaberg entrepreneurs Luke Truant and Lincoln Kirchner are in negotiations with a new distributor which could see Seafood Smokery Bundaberg products available from Cairns to the Gold Coast.
The Burnett Heads based duo have developed their own smoking technology that gives their range of smoked fish and pate a unique flavour.
Mr Kirchner, co-director and mastermind behind the innovative smoking technique, said while smoking was an “age-old technique”, existing technology was not producing a smoke profile he was satisfied with.
“Unhappy with what that was giving me I just basically developed my own,” Mr Kirchner said.
“We’re the only people in the world, as far as we know, that commercially produce hot-smoked, thin-slice fish.
“It meets a demand that essentially the cold-smoked salmon industry had created. We’ve gone in behind them introducing a similar customer base to a different product.”
Mr Truant said the pair had spent a number of years perfecting their smoker that was “unlike anything else on the market”.
“All the feedback we’ve had from butchers, from chefs is that wow this is something we can’t do, you guys are onto something big,” Mr Truant said.
“We believe we’ve almost secured a statewide distributor which is amazing for us moving forward.
“At the moment you can buy it through a range of outlets through the Sunshine Coast, Bundaberg, Hervey Bay, up to Yeppoon and down into Brisbane.
“Soon you are going to be able to buy it from Cairns through to the Gold Coast and we are hoping to move into the southern states very soon.”
Mr Kirchner said development and research of their product was continuing.
“To say that we’ve finished developing would be wrong. We change things nearly daily to keep improving.”
Bundaberg the perfect base for Seafood Smokery
For two local mates who love fishing there was no better place than the Bundaberg Region to launch a seafood business.
With aspirations to export throughout Australia they said being from one of the nation’s most recognised producing regions was a massive advantage.
“The name Bundaberg sells products. There’s no doubt about it,” Mr Truant said.
“Just coming from the Bundaberg Region; we’re known as the food bowl of Australia. It definitely helps.”
But it’s not just the name that has gone into their products. They both agreed that access to quality, fresh fish was a drawcard.
Their business philosophy is to use local scientifically sustainable fish, ethically caught and handled and smoked using local timber.
“So we want to use all Australian products, local fish and keep everything as local as we can to get control of product and get the best quality product we possibly can,” Mr Truant said.
“We can trace it literally from the fisherman right to the plate. So the fish are caught locally by small time fishermen, there’s nothing trawled, we don’t have any mass caught fish.
“We can tell you the day it was caught, we get the fish usually within a few hours of capture. Then we process them straight away.
“We can tell you the origin of the timber because we hand shave it ourselves, we collect it in the local area ourselves.
“If you want to know the whole story from paddock to plate, from sea to serve then we can tell you that.”
A location to live, work, play, invest
Mr Truant said Bundaberg was a location you could talk about “from a multitude of directions”.
“From a business perspective from us, we’re at the start of the Barrier Reef. We’ve got this gorgeous fish stock that really starts in Bundaberg.
“You want to talk about the business for macadamia, we use macadamia timber we’re in the macadamia capital locally.
“Also the weather, it is so good to live somewhere with the most stable climate you can possibly get.
“It’s great for business it’s great to live.
“When we had children you would only think of coming back to one place and that was Bundaberg.”
Mr Kirchner added “you can see the infrastructure and the development that has taken place, particularly in the last few years, has definitely improved the attractiveness of Bundaberg.”
Where to buy in the Bundaberg Region
- Learmonth's Foodworks
- The Lettuce Patch, Bargara Rd
- Baltimore Seafood and Takeaway, The Port Bundaberg
- Last Stop Convenience and Catering, North Bundaberg
Bargara Meats
