Equipped with adequate bottling plants and a proper distribution system, manufacturers of Liquefied Petroleum Gas i.e., the three major public sector oil companies and LPG cylinder distributors find the demand and supply to be a comfortable one in Coimbatore market, with no major or long waiting period between refill request and supply schedule.
“There has not been any major refill supply related issue in the last three to four years,” industry sources said, adding that the supply issues arise only during the rare instance of lorry strikes. Regarding the fluctuations in demand, a senior official from an oil company said that they are higher during festival seasons and lower during summer seasons.
On the question of bottling plants, industry sources said that the existing ones are sufficient to meet the demands. Sources said that the bottling plant of Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) is located in Kinathukadavu, which supplies cylinders to Pollachi, Mettupalayam, Erode, Tiruppur and the Nilgiris apart from Coimbatore. Indane has another bottling plant near Perundurai and another one at Salem. With 130 loads taken every day, wherein one load contains 306 LPG cylinders, the plant supplies surplus cylinders to Madurai and parts of Kerala, sources said.
The IOC bottling plant, along with the plants of Bharat Petroleum in Ganapathy and Hindustan Petroleum Corporation in Kerala help meet the demands of the region within a reasonable waiting period of two days to a maximum five days, sources said. However, in case of a spike in demand, the bottling plants will work more shifts and on holidays to ensure adequate supply, the official said.
Regarding the cases of panic booking, where customers tend to book cylinders well in advance fearing lack of delivery on time, the official said that panic booking cases are “very less” in Coimbatore. Only during festival season, the refill demand goes up marginally by 15 to 25%.