A Visit to Nuri, Portugal's Most Traditional Sardine Cannery
There are canneries, and then there are places where time seems to have quietly agreed to stand still. Pinhais - the century-old Portuguese cannery behind the Nuri tins we stock at Tin & Brine - is very much the latter. I recently spent an afternoon inside the cannery in Matosinhos, just outside Porto, watching a process that has barely changed since the 1920s.
A Portuguese Institution
Pinhais was founded in 1920 in Matosinhos, a fishing town on Portugal's Atlantic coast that has been a major player in the canning industry for more than a century. Chances are, if you’ve dabbled in Portuguese tinned fish, sardines in particular, you’ll have had something that’s been produced in this town.
Steeped in tradition, the Pinhais factory, which is best known for producing Nuri branded tinned sardines, is little changed in the last century. It occupies the same site, it uses many of the same processes, uses some of the same equipment (the ovens used are from the 1940s!), and employs generations of women from the same families - with grandmothers, mothers and children all working on the same lines. In fact, 95% of the staff at Pinhais are women, passionate about passing down their craft.
What’s the difference between Pinhais and Nuri? And where did the name come from?
The only differences between Pinhais tins and Nuri tins are the name and the brand. Launched in 1935 for international markets, Nuri is the better known of the two brands and accounts for 95% of all tins sold from the cannery. So why the two names, if the products are the same? Well, Pinhais is hard to pronounce for non-Portuguese speakers, so the founders decided to adopt a simpler name for international markets: Nuri.
And the name Nuri has its own story. One of the founding brothers fell for a Spanish woman named Nuria, and the name was a nod to her. Not only this, but one of the beautiful details that you’ve likely never noticed, but won’t unsee, is that the “N” in the Nuri logo hides an “A” within it, completing her name. Just look from the curled top of the N and follow it down and right and you’ll spot it.
From the Atlantic to the Auction Floor
Focussed on quality and with deep respect for the ocean, the fish for Nuri tins comes from independent fishermen manning small and medium-sized boats. Fish are landed daily, and at the crack of dawn two experts from Pinhais travel down to the markets to buy the best quality fish at auction. If the quality isn’t good enough, then on that day they won’t buy any fish. But they’ll pay a premium to net the best fish and maintain quality.
They also limit what they’ll buy to 5 tonnes. Which may sound like a lot, allowing up to 20,000 tins to be produced in a day or 4 million a year, but the largest canneries are outputting a crazy 4 million cans per day.
And whilst Nuri is best known for its sardines, especially the sardines in tomato sauce (the sauce recipe is a closely guarded secret known by only 6 people), they do also sell mackerel, horse mackerel and petingas (small sardines).
The Process: From Whole Fish to Finished Tin
The process, moving from raw, whole fish to a finished, beautifully packaged tin is artful. Summed up, and I hope I’ve not missed any key steps, it goes as follows:
Brining. Every fish that comes in is brined - not just for flavour, but to firm up the flesh and improve texture.
Gutting and heading. Done entirely by hand, the women can both remove the head and gut the fish in a single, fluid motion.
Washing. The fish are loaded into racks and washed. This is one of the only steps that's been modernised in recent years: there's now a machine to help with the washing. It used to mean physically dipping 12kg racks of fish into water, by hand, all day - back-breaking work.
Cooking before canning. Unlike many larger canneries, which cook the fish inside the sealed tin, Pinhais cooks the fish first. It's a slower way to do it, but it means the tin ends up carrying less of the fish's own fat and more of the flavour of the Portuguese olive oil or sauce it's packed in. The ovens doing this job today are the same ones the factory was using in the 1940s.
Hand-cut ingredients. Every ingredient that goes into the tins - pickles, carrots, or whatever the recipe calls for - is still cut by hand.
Packing. Each tin gets three to five sardines, weighing in at almost exactly 90g and packed by hand.
Canning, sealing and sterilising. The tins are filled, sealed, and sterilised.
Wrapping. Every single tin is wrapped by hand. I had a go myself and can confirm it is far harder than it looks. The women who do this for a living can wrap up to 1,400 tins a day. That's roughly one tin every ten to fifteen seconds!
Maturation. As surprising as it sounds, the fish tins are aged from 90 days up to 3 years. Tins of fish age and change with time, and many people prefer them after a few years as the flavours evolve and deepen.
Saving the best till last - the tasting and the buying
The tour ended as all good tours should, with food.
I opted for two tins, including the classic Nuri Sardines in Tomato Sauce. They were served simply with fresh, locally made bread, and needed nothing else. The freshness of the tomato sauce worked amazingly with the richness of the sardines. And like all good Portuguese food experiences, it was enjoyed with a glass of wine, a Vinho Verde specifically, which was perfect to cut through the richness of the fish.
This was followed by a worryingly long stint picking the tins I wanted to carry home, such as the Nuri Sardines in Spiced Tomato and Sardines in Olive Oil, but also some limited editions we’ve not been able to get our hands on (sorry!), like the sardinha em caldeirada (sardine stew).
Bringing a Bit of Pinhais Home
One thing that struck me during my time at the cannery is how little has changed over the last 100+ years, and how deliberate that is. It’s not the fastest or cheapest way to get the fish into the tins. It’s slower, more skilled, and relies heavily on the local people of Matosinhos. But that’s why it’s so loved, and how it still tastes the way it does. And as a testament to this, you know it’s good when the locals still pop down to the cannery to buy their tins in bulk, to eat as beer snacks.
If you'd like to try it for yourself, you can buy our Nuri bundle or view our full Nuri selection.