Manjimup Truffles is part of the Blakers family business of Five Acre Nursery, which has been a major vegetable and tree production nursery in Manjimup since 1979. Since the start of business we have pioneered many growing techniques and systems that are widely used today.
In 1994 we decided to attempt to grow French Black Truffles in our region and started to inoculate Hazelnut and Oak trees in the nursery. We established our first trufferie of five acres on our own farm just north of our nursery in1997. We have since established two more six-acre trufferies on the farm in 1999 and 2001. We have also supplied inoculated trees to other growers in Manjimup, Pemberton and Northcliffe areas in the past six years. All these trufferies have started to produce truffle in the past 2 years. Our harvest period is from mid May to early September.
Manjimup Truffles has supplied truffle to most of the top restaurants in Perth for the past 3 years and this year to the eastern states. We appointed Simon Johnson as our East Coast agent and are excited with the acceptance and demand for our truffles. Simon is now supplying our truffles to all the top restaurants in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. Also this year we hope to export to Japan, England and USA.
With the demand and acceptance of the quality of our truffles we are now promoting truffle growing as a viable agicultrual alternative to farmers in our region and are working towards establishing many grower owned trufferies in our region in next few years. All new growers enter into a marketing agreement on purchasing their trees and have a full consultation service with the development of their trufferies using our proven growing system. Our vision for the future is to be a major supplier of fresh black truffle to the world market out of season to the traditional European truffle growers.
