The Norwegian company Ragasco has been invited to put up a new factory in the Philippines, its local partner says.
The world’s leading producer of composite liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) cylinders is mulling over establishing a factory in the Philippines, its local partner said, according to the Philippine news portal InterAksyon.com.
The chairman of the Eastern Petroleum Corp Fernando L. Martinez, has invited Norway’s Ragasco AS to put up its regional manufacturing hub in the Philippines.
“On the long-haul, we are now encouraging them to manufacture here so that when 2015 comes for the Asean, we will be opening the market for 500 million customers in VIP,” Martinez said, referring to Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines.
Ragasco cylinders are made out of the same material used in fiberglass. This allows the LPG container to weigh less than half the steel tanks and to have a transparent portion where consumers actually see the content. The composite tanks are also explosion-proof.
Martinez said his company has proposed a site for a Ragasco manufacturing plant in the country and will meet with the Norwegian company’s officials next month, which is when Eastern Petroleum would roll out the explosion-proof cylinders.
“If we manufacture it here in the Philippines as a base we will be working after one year. They need a minimum, say, half-a-million cylinders a year,” Martinez said.
The establishment of a manufacturing hub in the country would also allow the two to lower their prices in the local market, as they no longer have to pay taxes and duties for the importation of Ragasco cylinders.
Eastern Petroleum earlier inked a deal with Ragasco for the supply of LPG cylinders.
The Philippine company is banking on the new generation LPG containers to corner at least 10 percent of the market this year. This is equivalent to roughly the distribution of around one million cylinders.
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