Filling out of containers in Sweden's outskirts

300 kilometres north of Stockholm in the outskirts of Sundsvall, a small Swedish filler set up shop in two containers - one for his three UFM filling machines and one for his office. He is located miles from anywhere and you wouldn't know he was there unless you saw the provisional road sign with the caption: Exchange your gas cylinder here! Gasoldepån's customers know where to find him and they keep coming back to top up their cylinders. Fillers in this vicinity are hard to come by, so this small-scale filler is making a decent living supplying happy customers with gas.

The LPG market in Sweden is much like that of the other Scandinavian countries where LPG is mostly used for summer houses, barbeques, patio heaters and the like. Despite being a small market, more and more small-scale fillers make a living off the filling business in Sweden due to the relatively large profits that can be achieved with fairly small initial investments - so it's an attractive business to enter.

With the solution from KC, Gasoldepån is able to flexibly fill both 6 kg, 10 kg, 11 kg, and 33 kg cylinders as well as camping cylinders (340 gram, 2 kg, and 3 kg). His competitive edge lies in his distant location: by means of his distributer truck, he reaches even the most remote areas in his region in a 250 kilometres' radius of Sundsvall. This means he is also able to the supply customers who come down from the mountains to stock up on LPG. The larger fillers seemingly let him have this region to himself since claiming this market requires a lot of transport on their part. The challenge for a small filler on the other hand is to be able to compete with hardware stores that reduce prices on gas while earning a (larger) profit on other products. It seems possible however, in part because of favourable cost prices on new cylinders from Poland.

Sweden is not a big market though, and his 20 ton gas tank sufficiently provides him with enough gas to sell approx. 400 ton gas per year. Daily, his filling business processes a total of 150-200 cylinders. In that respect, this small filler has the perfect solution for his filling needs and the quantities he is able to sell. No more, no less.