An iconic Brisbane fishing business that last month announced it would shut down after 97 years, will remain open for a little while longer to fill an influx of orders.

"Since everyone's known we were closing the business, the response from the public has been overwhelming," Bruce Alvey, the owner of Alvey Reels, told ABC Radio Brisbane's Steve Austin.

"Our farewell Facebook post has had more than 800,000 views and we have 4,000 personal messages.

Loading

"People are wishing us the best and asking us how we can save the company."

Mr Alvey said the business had more than 1,000 orders to fill since the closure announcement.

"Many people are saying they're buying a reel for their kids or their future grandkids or as back-ups for their own," he said.

"We'll stay open till mid-September now; we've had to go back to our staff as we gave them a finish date of August 21."

High electricity prices make operations expensive

Mr Alvey said power bills were a major contributor to the decision to end operations.

"Electricity has doubled in the time we have been open," he said.

"We get a $5,000 bill a month, but the part that irks you is that $600 is for electricity and the rest is fees and government charges.

"Any other industrial client is the same, we're hearing about a plastic recycler who's had his electricity charges gone up from $30,000 a month to $80,000 and they have to close as they can't pay their power bills.

"It's a terrible system we're in at the moment."

Four fishing companies are interested in taking over the business.

"The business will probably go overseas because the costs here in Australia are killing us," Mr Alvey said.

"We would have to sell the name with it otherwise they have no relevance in it.

"It's pretty good when your product is known by its name; technically it's a side-cast fishing reel, but everyone just calls it an Alvey."

Reel success

He said the reel has been such a success because it's designed for Australian anglers.

"Our style of reel really only gets used in volume here in Australia," Mr Alvey said.

"We've been selling reels in America for 45 years plus, but unfortunately it's a unique Aussie style of fishing here and it's really the only place in the world where we fish like we do."

Bruce and Glenn Alvey have made the tough decision to close. ( ABC News: Melanie Vujkovic )

Despite the tough decision to close, Mr Alvey said it came down to having to "make a tough business decision".

"My brother and I have had many sleepless nights about this but in the last two years we've put a lot of money in it to keep it afloat," he said.

"My cousin said to me that we have to look at it from the positive side and we've made lots and lots of fishermen happy over 97 years, and how many people can say that?"