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sk any consumer based in Luzon what brand of LPG he uses at home. More often than not, he would cite Starflame, Shellane, or Gasul – products of the three big oil companies in the country. Ask the same question from a consumer in the Visayas and Mindanao. One of every four will answer – Prycegas.
Prycegas is a product of Pryce Gases Inc. (PGI), a company that operates in the Mindanao and Visayas areas. Pryce Gases now boasts of a 24 percent market share in the LPG market in the area. Since entering the LPG market in September 1996, it has been steadily eating into the market share of two big oil companies. And it would not stop at that.
According to Efren Palma, PGI’s EVP for Finance, management has made it clear to its 500-strong workforce that the company intends to corner 50 percent of the market by year 2005 – an ambitious target, given that it is coming from a 24 percent share in 2003. But the company has geared up for this.
Balbino Privaldos Jr., SVP for Administrative Services said that it is expanding storage plants and developing more dealers to saturate markets. The recent introduction of its 2.8-kilogram cylinder is clearly a step to reach out to the smaller consumers. To date, PGI has 16 LPG storage plants all over the country with a combined capacity of 8,670 metric tons (MT) and counts 5,000 sales outlets in the Visayas and Mindanao.
Starter : Industrial Gases
PGI’s venture into the LPG market was a strategic decision that took advantage of the opportunities offered by the full deregulation of the downstream oil industry in the Philippines. Prior to LPG, Pryce Gases has been in the manufacture and distribution of industrial and medical gases.
In recalling the history of PGI, Palma hinted on the entrepreneurial spirit of its founder and current Chairman and CEO, Salvador Escaño.
Escaño was previously employed in a commercial bank, which exposed him to different businesses. His valuable involvement in rescuing an ailing company eventually paved the way to his leaving the ranks of the “employed” and becoming an employer himself.
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Pryce Gases storage plants in Misamis Oriental |
It was in 1981 when Pryce Development Corporation, the mother company of Pryce Group that Escaño himself established, entered into a management contract with the struggling Central Luzon Oxygen and Acetylene Company Inc. (CLOACO). A year later, PDC acquired full ownership of CLOACO. Under Escaño’s leadership, it became a profitable operation in the Central Luzon area.
Being a native of Mindanao, Escaño could not resist the call to establish a business presence in the south. He also realized that the prospects for the gas industry were brighter in Southern Philippines. It was, therefore, not too difficult for Escaño to give up CLOACO to Consolidated Industrial Gases (CIGI) and establish Pryce Gases in Mindanao.
PGI started its operations in April 1988 with its first plant at Phividec Industrial Estate in Misamis Oriental. It now has nine oxygen plants and eight acetylene plants with a total production capacity of 5,520 cylinders per day for oxygen and 2,400 cylinders per day for acetylene.
These capacities are expected to expand. PGI hopes to ride on the brightening business and economic prospects in Visayas and Mindanao. PGI will also make sure that competition in the LPG market in Southern Philippines remains healthy for the benefit of the consumers.
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