Trends: An overview into the Brazilian Bottling Market
By Cédric MARMILLOUD, Senior Area Sales Manager, SIRAGA SA, France
The Brazilian market is the largest LP Gas market in South America, with a stable average volume up to 4.9 million tons of bottled LP Gas per year. LP Gas is used as a cooking gas in nearly 95% of Brazilian households (Argus Dec 2008).
The market is relatively concentrated compared with the other South American markets, since more than 85% of sales are achieved by 4 companies: Ultragaz, Liquigás, SHV Gas Brazil and NG Butano (source: Brazilian LPG distributors Association, Sindigas 2009). Each of those first majors represent an approximate yearly 1.1 million ton volume, i.e. more than the global bottled LP Gas market of Argentina, Chile, Ecuador or even Spain!
Handling such large volumes means that Brazilian LP Gas distributors investing in highly-reliable and state-of-the art technology have the constant objective to improve the quality of service for the end-consumer and to cut costs. In order to tackle these market challenges, filling plants must operate at an extremely high production level.
Typically, filling lines produce more than 1,800 cylinders per hour. Increasing production is key to growth and some Siraga lines already operate at 2, 200 cylinders per hour. Some customers are now asking for lines to produce up to 2,600 cylinders per hour on one single 36-post carrousel. The target is clearly to cut filling costs in this highly-competitive market. Over the last 10 years, the Brazilian market has experienced tremendous development and we think that the Siraga lines have made a huge contribution to the introduction of a modern filling technology.
Safety is a key issue within our business and in 1998, we introduced a new electronic equipment that enabled safety controls on the cylinders: leak detection equipment, valve gasket detector, a gasket which is essential to connect the cylinder to the consumer’s installation. For many years we have been simplifying the logistics between the distributor and their customers by introducing palletizing systems, for instance. Other major innovations soon found an application in Brazil, especially at FOGÁS in Manaus.
The ULTRAGAZ Capuava site is the largest plant in Brazil. In terms of how it works, the plant operates 3 carrousels at the same time, each of them producing 2, 000 cylinders per hour. This site is also equipped with the latest generation of control equipment and production is supervised by an HMI/SCADA system, including Siraga’s data collection software.
Some 40,000 LP Gas cylinders are filled every hour by our equipment - imagine 23 filling carrousels using electronic installation devices to weigh and ensure a safe and precise filling of LPG cylinders!!
See you in Rio, booths 37-38 and 47-48!
Contact Cédric MARMILLOUD:
cedric.marmilloud@siraga.com
