Litro Gas Lanka says it plans to distribute about 700,000 domestic gas cylinders island-wide by 27 October, citing high market demand, Hiru News reported on Sunday, quoting a special media release from the company.
The release gives a shipping schedule:
- The vessel Goodwill, carrying 3,900 metric tonnes of gas, arrived on 24 October.
- Distribution of 350,000 domestic cylinders from the cargo of the vessel that arrived on 22 October has continued on 23, 24 and 25 October.
- A further gas vessel is due on 26 October.
Litro says it is confident customers will be able to buy domestic gas from the market without a shortage within the coming days.
The 700,000 figure is two cargoes, and the arithmetic holds
The company does not explain how it arrives at 700,000, but the number is consistent with its own shipping figures.
A 3,900-tonne cargo yielding 350,000 cylinders implies an average fill of about 11.1 kg per cylinder — plausible for a mix weighted towards Litro’s 12.5 kg domestic unit with some 5 kg and 2.5 kg cylinders. At that same average, two cargoes — the 22 October vessel and the Goodwill — come to 700,000 cylinders almost exactly.
So the target is not an aspiration layered on top of the shipments; it is the 22 October and 24 October cargoes bottled and moved, with the 26 October arrival available behind it. That calculation is this desk’s own; the release states neither the average fill nor the derivation.
Where this sits in the shipment sequence
The Goodwill is the fifth gas vessel in this sequence and the 26 October arrival will be the sixth, on the Daily Mirror’s numbering.
On 20 October the company said the vessel Francois had arrived on 18 October with 3,900 tonnes and that the fourth vessel, Corinthian, was due on 22 October with a further 3,900 tonnes, the Daily Mirror reported. That identifies the unnamed “vessel that arrived on 22 October” in Sunday’s release as the Corinthian, and puts four consecutive cargoes of the same size — 3,900 tonnes each — into the country between 18 and 26 October.
Context: a shortage the government said was not one
This is the latest instalment in a supply squeeze that has run for more than a week. Litro told customers on 17 October that cylinders would reach the market the following Tuesday, and on 21 October the responsible minister said there was no shortage while queues persisted.
The steady cadence of 3,900-tonne arrivals, and a company statement issued on a Sunday to pre-announce a two-day distribution push, are not the behaviour of a normal supply month. Readers in the market this week should note that the 700,000 figure is a distribution plan, not a quantity already on retail shelves.
Not reported
The release does not name the 26 October vessel or give its tonnage, does not break the 700,000 down by cylinder size or district, and does not say how many cylinders are currently in the retail chain or what normal weekly demand is — the figure readers would need to judge whether 700,000 clears the backlog. It gives no reason for the “high demand” it cites, and no explanation of what caused the shortfall.
Neither NewsFirst nor EconomyNext had filed on the announcement at the time of writing; EconomyNext’s pages were unretrievable from this desk this cycle.
