Quick and Efficient Gas Business Plan — Operations

The 4.9 tonne bulk vessel, decanting and filling workflow, cylinder handling, stock control and the trading day behind 49 fills.

Operations

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6.1 The filling operation
6.2 Volume build
6.3 Staffing
6.4 Supply and delivery logistics
6.5 The accessory business

6.1 The filling operation

Step	What happens
1. Cylinder received	Customer presents their own cylinder; ownership and condition checked
2. Inspection	Valve, neck ring, foot ring, corrosion and test date inspected; failures rejected or offered for revalidation
3. Tare weight confirmed	Empty weight stamped on the cylinder is used as the filling reference
4. Fill by mass	Filled on a calibrated scale to the correct fill ratio, never by volume or by time
5. Leak test	Valve and neck leak tested before the cylinder leaves the bay
6. Seal and issue	Cylinder sealed, ticketed and handed over or loaded for delivery

Filling by mass on a calibrated scale is both a safety requirement and a commercial one. Overfilling is dangerous; underfilling is theft from the customer and, in a market where consumers are advised to weigh their cylinders, a fast route to a lost reputation. The plan assumes a fill loss of 1.8 per cent from vapour, purging and weighing tolerance, which raises the effective cost of gas from R30.80 to R31.36 per kilogram.

6.2 Volume build

Cylinder	Gas mass	Share of fills	Share of kilograms	Typical customer
9 kg cylinder	9 kg	54%	28.7%	Household cooking and heating
19 kg cylinder	19 kg	24%	27.0%	Spaza shops, takeaways, small business
14 kg cylinder	14 kg	9%	7.4%	Larger households, caravans
48 kg cylinder	48 kg	13%	36.9%	Restaurants, caterers, workshops
Weighted average per fill	16.9 kg	100%	100%

	Year 1	Year 2	Year 3	Year 4	Year 5
Cylinder fills per trading day	27.3	37.6	44.2	47.0	49.4
Trading days	310	310	310	310	310
Average kilograms per fill	16.9	16.9	16.9	16.9	16.9
Tonnes of LPG sold	143.0	197.2	231.7	246.5	258.9
Bulk deliveries a year	34.3	47.3	55.6	59.2	62.2

At 47 fills a day across 310 trading days and an average of 16.9 kilograms per fill, the shop moves 246.5 tonnes of LPG a year. The 48 kilogram cylinder is only 13 per cent of transactions but a much larger share of kilograms, which is why the commercial customer base matters more than the transaction count suggests.

6.3 Staffing

Role	Number	Monthly cost each	Note
Owner-manager	1	R26 000	On site; the business does not carry a second management layer
Qualified gas filler / SAQCC operator	1	R17 500	Registration is a licence condition, not a preference
Filling assistants	2	R8 400
Driver	1	R9 200	Dangerous goods qualified
Counter and admin	1	R9 800
Total, including statutory contributions	6	R80 965	Annual R971 584

All wages are above the national minimum of R30.23 per ordinary hour. The SAQCC-registered filler is the least substitutable person in the business. Without a registered practitioner on site the shop cannot lawfully fill, which makes this role a single point of failure — and the plan therefore commits to training a second employee to registration within eighteen months rather than treating it as a contingency to be arranged if the first one leaves.

6.4 Supply and delivery logistics

Element	Design	Why it matters
Bulk vessel	4.9 tonne, holding about 4 165 kg of usable gas	Cannot be stockpiled ahead of winter. Volume is met by delivery frequency
Delivery frequency	1.2 a month in January rising to 4.9 in July	The single most operationally demanding feature of the business
Winter commitment	Contracted into the supply agreement	A supplier who can deliver twice in summer but not five times in July costs the best trading weeks
Second approved wholesaler	Qualified by Year 3	Removes a single point of failure on both price and winter availability
Tanker access	Turning circle and safe reach to the vessel fill point	A site that a tanker cannot service is not a site
Outbound delivery	LDV with cylinder cage, dangerous-goods qualified driver	SANS 10231 applies to the vehicle, the driver and the equipment
Delivery radius	The surrounding suburbs within reasonable turnaround	Fee-based, and it is what builds the small-business account base

6.5 The accessory business

Line	Margin	Role in the model
Cylinder sales — 9, 14, 19 and 48 kg	22%	Serves customers whose cylinders fail inspection, and builds the exchange float
Gas appliances — heaters, hobs, braais	32%	Highly seasonal; attaches to the winter heating customer
Regulators, hoses and fittings	High margin, low value	High attachment rate on almost every transaction
Installation and Certificate of Conformity work	56%	Requires a SAQCC-registered practitioner. The highest-margin line in the business
Cylinder revalidation	Unregulated	Cylinders retested roughly every ten years; converts a rejected fill into a sale
Delivery	Fee-based	Builds the small-business account base that stabilises the diary

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