Case: Ultragaz, Brazil
Ultragaz, the largest LPG supplier in Brazil, needed their filling equipment to perform to its highest potential in order to reach their goals of operational efficiency and supply security. However, a full operational assessment of each plant would be too time-consuming and unnecessary. Together, we came up with an assessment model that fit their situation, giving them the support they need to move forward.
Ultragaz and MAKEEN Energy share a successful history that goes back many years, and our technology has helped them fill millions of cylinders each year across their many filling plants in Brazil. It’s a business relationship characterised by mutual respect and deep understanding.
New consortium raises the bar
Recently, Ultragaz entered into a cooperation with another Brazilian LPG supplier, Supergasbras. Together, the two companies have created a consortium that means they now jointly operate their infrastructure for storage, filling, and logistics. By sharing assets in this way, they saw the potential to be more efficient, have greater security in their supply capacity, and improve their service levels toward distributors and consumers.
For this partnership to make sense, it must reduce costs for both companies without compromising their commercial autonomy. The number of working hours at each plant has increased, and the usual 8 or 9 hours of production per day are now 10 or even 12 hours of production. Therefore, all the equipment at each site needs to perform to its highest potential – to achieve its nominal capacity, in industry terms.
A tailored assessment plan
Ultragaz has previously made use of MAKEEN Energy’s consultancy services, in which our experts visit a customer’s site to evaluate their entire operation – from operational procedures and plant layout to equipment maintenance, staff training, and more. This had produced great results in the past, but in this case, a series of full assessments would be excessive. Luckily, we can be flexible, so we sat down with Ultragaz to work out a customised assessment plan for 5 of their filling plants. The plan focused only on making their equipment achieve its nominal production capacity, a solution we named “light assessment”.
The task was to visit each plant and perform a detailed analysis of every single machine in the cylinder filling process, then regulate and fine-tune it for optimal performance. This type of work seems easy from the outside, but it requires highly specialised knowledge of, for example, which parameters to adjust and how to configure valves. Luckily, our technical supervisors are highly skilled at this type of work.
Achieving balance
Our technicians visited the 5 agreed-upon filling plants, spending 4 or 5 days at each one, inspecting and adjusting the machines. They started with the filling carrousels, which were all of a considerable size: one site featured a 36-post carrousel, while the other sites had 30-post carrousels. Their first task was to adjust these carrousels to be able to fulfil their nominal output (2,400 and 2,100 cylinders per hour, respectively), before making sure that the inlets and outlets, leak detectors, telescopic conveyors, and many other machines were able to handle this new, optimised production rate.
The result was a smooth, efficient, and harmonious flow without bottlenecks. We delivered a technical report that gave Ultragaz complete insight into our findings and adjustments, and as an added benefit, we gave them a list of recommended spare parts to keep in stock to make sure that this newly optimised equipment could maintain its high performance.
More assessments to come
All in all, the light assessment package was a low-cost solution that gave Ultragaz huge value for their business and their partnership with Supergasbras. They expressed their satisfaction with the process and the result – here are the words of Douglas Rozendo da Silva, Engineering Process & Project Specialist at Ultragaz:
“The proactivity, technical expertise, and quality of service delivered by MAKEEN Energy’s specialists were decisive for the results achieved. In addition to the operational gains, the assessment also had a very positive impact on the technical development of the Ultragaz professionals involved. Throughout the on-site analysis and fine‑tuning activities, our team gained valuable learnings that strengthened their technical knowledge and enhanced their understanding of best practices to ensure equipment performance and reliability.”
The light assessment carried out at our production sites was essential to increasing equipment productivity and, consequently, improving the overall OEE of Ultragaz. The approach developed together with the MAKEEN Energy technical team enabled us not only to optimise the performance of our filling equipment, but also to identify improvement opportunities in operations, procedures, and maintenance.
"This initiative has added immediate value to our business and to the new shared‑operations model within the consortium. It will continue to deliver benefits as we move forward with additional assessments across our remaining plants."
How does it work?
As further proof of the success of this flexible model, Ultragaz has decided to book more light assessments in their other filling plants, which we will carry out during 2026. We thank Ultragaz for the confidence and the continued cooperation between our companies!
