By Mohammad Shoeb
DOHA: Qatar Fuel (Woqod), the main retailer of energy products including cooking gas cylinders in the country, has phased out over a third of metal gas cylinders with Shafaf — a transparent plastic gas cylinder considered safer and explosion proof, a senior official of the company has revealed. “Currently, there are about 650,000 LPG (liquefied petroleum gas) cylinders in circulation in the market, of that 250,000 are Shafaf… Over the last three years we have already replaced one-third of the total cylinders,” a senior spokesperson at Woqod told The Peninsula.
“We are trying our best to phase out all the remaining metal cylinders with Shafaf cylinders which is expected to be completed within two to three years,” he added, requesting anonymity.
The Shafaf LPG cylinders are available in 12kg and 6kg variants. The sales of 12kg transparent cylinders in 2015 rose by over 44 percent to about 1.9 million compared to previous year. While the sales of 6kg units increased by 21.6 percent to 45,000 cylinders, compared to 37,000 for 2014.
Despite intensive efforts to replace metal gas cylinders with Shafaf, the metal cylinders did not record a significant drop during 2015 and their sales remained in the range of 5.15 million cylinders compared to 5.12 million in 2014.
Therefore, Woqod is planning to launch a new strategy to replace them with Shafaf ones.
The strategy is expected to be applied gradually and with flexibility so as not to cause confusion in the local market. Under the new plan, more incentives are to be granted to customers.
Woqod earlier raised the compensation from QR50 to QR100 to swap metal cylinders with Shafaf. The swap promotion is still running.
The year 2015 witnessed a fair growth in LPG sales exceeding 9.6 percent compared to 2014, with total sales rising to 122,165 tonnes (including LPG sales in bulk) compared to 111,497 tonnes during the previous year, according to Company’s annual report.
“The sales figures of February suggest the same pattern as compared to previous months. People are coming and replacing metal cylinders with Shafaf taking advantage of the QR100 discount which we are offering as part of our promotion campaign to use safer, lighter and more user-friendly cylinders”, said the spokesperson.
He also said that Woqod has a stock of few hundred thousands of transparent cylinders and trying to convince the customers about the benefits of switching over to Shafaf.
He said Shafaf cylinders are not only safer and easy to handle but they also do not explode in case of fire which is “good reason enough to buy them”.
To a question on awareness campaigns, he said: “Fundamentally, we are doing awareness programmes through advertisements, including monetary incentives (discounts).”
Asked about the safety of metal cylinders and their routine fitness check-ups, he said: “ Every time we take a cylinder back to our facility for refilling, it is properly weighted and thoroughly checked for leaks at our automated calibration system.”
The Peninsula
