Calor Gas Ltd welcomes vital House of Commons debate on Metal Theft

7 February 2012

Calor Gas Ltd. has welcomed a debate in the House of Commons today on the important issue of metal theft as the epidemic continues to spread across the country.

Last year, 200,000 gas cylinders were stolen across the UK by scrap metal thieves, at a cost to the liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) industry of £9 million. Calor Gas Ltd’s cylinders accounted for 50% of these thefts – 100,000 steel gas cylinders with a market value of £4.5 million.

Almost three-quarters of Calor Gas’s business comes from providing gas to homes and businesses which are off the mains supply, mostly in rural areas.

Paul Blacklock, Head of Strategy and Corporate Affairs at Calor Gas, which retails more than 6 million gas cylinders a year through over 12,000 UK outlets, said that the cylinders cost up to £60 each to manufacture.

"For the last 75 years we have never needed a system to track our gas cylinders, but that has changed. There is a criminal element at play here. This is beyond casual theft.

"It is these cylinders that have fallen prey to the metal-theft crime wave. It is happening in some of the most remote communities in the country."

Calor Gas has written to the managers/proprietors of 1500 scrap yards in the UK urging them not to accept the stolen steel cylinders. Even a nominally empty cylinder will contain traces of the highly flammable gas and represents a hazard to anyone involved in removing valves or cutting up the cylinder. Fires, serious injury and avoidable deaths have all been recorded.

Some of the bottles have been seen in scrap yards with their bases taken off or even cut in half. And one man was recently found hitting gas cylinders with a sledgehammer in a public car park in Newark in Nottinghamshire in an attempt to remove the brass valves prior to selling the stolen cylinders.
Recently Land Rover Monthly magazine ran an article showing readers how to make traditional-looking wood-burning stoves out of old gas cylinders.
Paul Blacklock wrote to the magazine, saying "We hope your insurance is good."

At the start of December last year, 110 Calor Gas bottles were taken from a depot in Cardiff in what appeared to be organised raids. One gas cylinder has been spotted as far afield as Tanzania, where the company does not do business.

The police are finding it difficult to take action as evidence of ‘theft’ is too difficult to establish. It is for this reason that the debate in the House of Commons today is of crucial importance to the LPG industry.

"Politicians, the UK police force and enforcement authorities need to take this seriously," says Paul Blacklock.

"We are encouraged by the recent announcement of the Government’s intention to prohibit cash payments for scrap metal and increase fines for all offenses, under the Scrap Metal Dealers Act of 1964 but this needs to go further with a requirement placed on the dealer to obtain further information on the individual or business supplying the scrap metal. Regarding the illegal export of the cylinders, formal recognition needs to be granted that the unauthorised handling of all LPG cylinders is a crime."

For further information please contact Holly Sims at Calor Gas Ltd on HSims@calor.co.uk

---

Press releases, papers and documents published on this page are the intellectual property of an organisation unrelated to Central Lobby. We promote their parliamentary and political campaigning activities as they are subscribers to the Central Lobby service.

As such, Central Lobby does not edit, endorse, or attempt to balance the opinions expressed on this page. The content of press releases and other such types of content are the responsibility of the originating organisation.