Jamaican households may be turning down the heat, but the country’s restaurants are cooking up a storm, according to trends that are being seen in the liquified petroleum gas (LPG) market.

Peter Graham, chief executive officer of Massy Gas Products, the entity which owns the IGL and Gas Pro brands of cooking gas, said he has been noticing the trend in his company’s sales.

“Another shift that we see happening, the younger demographic, many of them prefer purchase meals over prepared meals, so a younger person, for example, working at a call centre, may choose to buy a bowl of soup in the afternoon from a quick service restaurant instead of going home to prepare a meal,” Graham told the Jamaica Observer in an interview about trends in the LPG market.

He said while he has not seen a decline in LPG sales, there is a definite shift in the demand for LPG from households with commercial entities picking up the slack.

“A few years ago, our sales of LPG was 60 per cent to households and 40 per cent to restaurants and other commercial entities, but that has changed to the point where they are now 50/50,” he told BusinessWeek.

Graham puts the trend down to the low unemployment rate in Jamaica, adding that he saw a similar shift in another country he worked in the past. He, however, added that while the market continues to grow, the growth is retarded by the fact that the market for LPG in Jamaica is a mature one.

“Jamaica has a very high penetration of LPG in homes so the growth rate is not rapid,” he noted as he added that changes in people’s preferences to living in high-rise buildings, which bars the use of gas stoves in favour of electric stoves, is also impacting demand for LPG.

Colin Karjohn, executive chairman of the Petroleum Company of Jamaica (Petcom), said he has also seen the trend. Petcom distributes Cookie gas, which is ranked at number three in the market behind Massy’s IGL and Gas Pro brands.

“The fast food business taking over most of the business, because people don’t have time to cook…that’s why the drive-thrus and food lines are so long,” Karjohn told the BusinessWeek. He said the trend is recent and was not seen five years ago.

Jeremy Barnes, CEO of Future Energy Sources Company Limited (Fesco), said it was too early for his organisation to comment on the trend given that his entity only entered the LPG market last year.

But a shift in LPG demand from households to restaurants is not the only trend Graham said he is seeing.

“We are also seeing a shift to LPG from other fuels like diesel and Bulker C No 6 and as we speak, a large company is now building out a boiler system and moving away from diesel to LPG. So we are seeing some movements shifting a little bit away but we also seeing some large customers saying LPG is cleaner; our cost to operate with boilers is better with LPG and we seeing some growth and we encourage that because it is a cheaper fuel and burns cleaner, which is good for the environment,” Graham said.

Massy Gas Products, through its two brands, controls about 70 per cent of the LPG market in Jamaica. It acquired IGL in 2023 for a fee in the region of US$140.3 million. There are 13 other companies supplying the other 30 per cent of the market.

“So you have more colours for cylinders than we have in the rainbow, we like to say that in the industry,” Graham noted.

“But IGL’s iconic blue cylinder still remains leader, Gas Pro second and combined has a very strong market player. Some people say it is too strong but we do not pay attention to the size of the share, but the service we can give,” he added.

“When we look at the brand strength and the brand equity, and the feedback from our customers and what they say about each brand, we believe that going forward, this near to medium term, we will have one corporate entity, but two distinct brands. And companies have successfully done that.”

The company recently exported its first shipment of medical-grade oxygen to The Bahamas and said it is going after other markets for that product, but also wants to start exporting LPG as well.

“We believe that with our import terminal in Freeport, another thing that we have to consider, and it may be sooner rather than later, is to export LPG. That will be the next export initiative we are working on as we speak,” Graham told BusinessWeek.

He said while his company purchases about 40 per cent of its LPG from the State-owned refinery Petrojam, it also imports the product through its own facility in Freeport, St James, from which it supplies the northern and western end of the island. Purchases from Petrojam supply the rest of the island, he said.

“So we don’t have to take the product from Kingston and have that transport risk of pulling tankers with LPG across the country. You know, we bring it in at Montego Bay and sell it in the western region.”

Some of the supply, he pointed out, is also sold to its competitors.