Published

Good things come in small packages

CASE: 

Customer

Enacol, Cape Verde

The customer's challenge

Outdated, imprecise equipment and a small market with logistical challenges of distributing LPG to several different islands.

Our solution

Three small filling stations, each fitted in an 8 foot container with one or two UFM's, placed on three separate islands.

The outcome

Enacol is able to meet demand on the Cape Verdean market much faster and more efficiently.

Located far off the west coast of Africa, the islands of Cape Verde are not a place where you will find great filling plants with huge carrousels and multi-tiered palletizing systems. Here, the islands' population of roughly 500,000 use LPG for cooking and not much else. By global standards, it is a tiny market.

The challenge in a place like Cape Verde is not just being able to fill enough cylinders to meet the demand. Rather, it is how to maintain efficient distribution and availability in a nation with many scattered islands. The country's main structure for LPG storage is two spherical 1500 MT tanks on one island. The logistics are often complicated, with LPG having to be transported by boat to small filling plants on the other eight islands.

For a long time, when LPG was delivered, the process was further complicated by the equipment used to fill cylinders - A lot of it was woefully outdated. Cylinders were weighed on old scales and filled using rusty, worn down filling machines. Not the best combination if you are aiming for precision and efficiency!

ENACOL therefore called upon Kosan Crisplant to deliver a smarter solution. Three small container solutions, each only measuring 8 feet, were delivered in 2010 to three separate islands. Two containers were equipped with a single UFM, while the third was equipped with two UFM's, all modified to accommodate different cylinder sizes and valve types, and was ready to commence operations immediately upon delivery. Needless to say, this new equipment from KC, being easy to operate and maintain, was a great quality of life upgrade for the operators.

Seven years later, the equipment is still running smoothly, and the filling process in Cape Verde has been tremendously optimised. Previously, filling cylinders took up most of the day. Now it is done in a few hours, thanks to KC's faster and more precise solution.

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