With business reopening, truffles importers face once more their usual challenge: moving perishable cargo safely and on time.

Truffles are a rare fungus, almost impossible to be grown, used in the high-end cuisine of the best restaurants in the world. With its distinctive earthy flavor and aroma, less than three grams in an individual portion and enough to turn a great pasta into an unforgettable gastronomic experience.

They are considered the diamonds of gastronomy – for their price, too. A CNBC story shows that, in 2019, a portion of Alba truffles weighing 2 pounds was sold for 75 thousand euros.

Our customer in today’s story is a company in Mexico City that imports black and white truffles from Italy.

In March, during the contingency to fight COVID-19, they decided to make a difficult decision: “we will be pausing our importation of fresh truffles until further notice, due to the instability in Italy, the supply chain and the unknown days ahead.”

The new normal days arrive

A couple of months later, we all started preparing for the reactivation of the economy.

Karen Ramírez, one of our air import executives, approached the company to address their concerns and needs.

Basically, they had a very low budget, after several weeks working only with alternative goods, and were facing difficulties to get flights from Europe.

“I realized that we could use all the experience and positive attitude of our leading air import leader, Arturo Eslava, who asked me to coordinate a conference with the client to reassure them that we are experts in problem-solving,” remembers Karen.

In the videocall with the client, Arturo focused on presenting them (and also to our teams) all the solutions we could use to handle the truffles. “We always have in mind how delicate the cargo is, taking care of all the logistics necessities to always keep the cold chain and, above all, get the cargo to the customer on time. It would be in good hands all the way”, says Eslava.

A network of reliable partners, all over the world

In Italy, we sought the operational support of one of our trusted partners for this type of procedure. One of the advantages of having a freight forwarder as experienced as Europartners Group by your side is that we are part of a strong worldwide logistics network, which reinforces that your cargo will always be transported in perfect conditions – and opens great possibilities when it comes to finding the best routes, transit times and costs.

In this case, our teams interceded with the airlines to get a direct next flight out, as the cargo was perishable.

The solution was to get the cargo in a reefer van to Paris, France (CDG), which had more flight options to Mexico at that time.

The high-valuable cargo, an 8 kg box, got to our partner’s warehouse on a Friday, ready to flight to Mexico on Saturday.

Our team of operations, including the airport team and our logistics developer Itzel Lopez, were online all over the weekend, in direct contact with our partner, notifying the customer of each shipment’s progress, until the cargo got to Mexico City in perfect conditions.

In a letter to their customers, in March, the importers stated: “One of the greatest privileges that we have is to participate in the great ecosystem of restaurants here in Mexico City. We cannot wait to return to being a note within a chord of the culinary song of the city.”

With Europartners Group’s air import team by their side, the gastronomic symphony of Mexico City will count once more with delicious Italian truffles.

Do you need to import refrigerated cargo? Contact us now. We have excellent solutions in different modes, from and to anywhere in the world.