Evolution of truffle prices in a conventional Tuber Melanosporum black truffle campaign

The Tuber melanosporum or better known as black truffle, begins its campaign in mid-November and ends in late March or early April, depending on the weather. In this article we will define how the truffle price evolves and the factors that make this price the way it is. Basically there are three factors that determine the kilo price of truffles: the truffle on offer, the market demand and the quality of the truffle. We understand good quality as the% of truffle that can be classified as the most valued qualities in a batch. A good quality lot would be one that we can buy 10kg and almost 70% is sold fresh and has practically no soil or waste. The fact that the truffle has a low percentage of quality does not mean that there are not good and mature specimens, simply the percentage of these is low.

The campaign begins in mid-November and the percentage of ripe truffles valid for sale fresh is very low. Then we would speak of lots of truffles with poor quality for marketing fresh and therefore the value of the field merchandise is low. Likewise, this small percentage of ripe and good truffle that they deliver must be sold at a high price to compensate for all the kg of immature truffle that must be used for industrial products.

In mid-December, the truffle is much better than in November, 3 or 4 weeks in the campaign have already passed, the quality of the batches has improved a lot and the percentage of ripe truffles valid for fresh marketing is considerably higher. In addition, a new factor enters that causes prices to increase significantly, and that is that in France and in many countries they have a tradition of eating truffles during the Christmas period. This causes the demand to increase a lot and therefore the price of the truffle shoots up considerably. These two weeks it is typical to collect the truffles daily because there is not enough truffle to supply all that the market demands.

Once the Christmas and New Year holidays are over, the quality of the truffle reaches near its optimum, but the demand drops drastically and therefore we can say that in January the truffle is of much better quality and a better price. It is in this period that most manufacturing companies try to stock frozen or canned truffles in order to supply the market during the year when there is no fresh truffle.

In February the truffle reaches its optimum maturity and the percentage of black truffle that can be used to sell fresh is very high, with some batches reaching 70-80%. In this case, the price that the producer receives from the field lots and the price at which the truffle is sold is significantly reduced.