The Portuguese oil company Galp (re)inaugurated, this Wednesday, a storage and bottling plant for cooking gas canisters, in the city of Matola, Maputo province, whose investment was around 12 million dollars.

Galp's new unit has the capacity to fill 1,200 11-kilogram bottles of cooking gas every hour. Another unit for filling 45-kilogram bottles has the capacity to fill two 20 bottles, per hour.

The new complex was equipped with a piped connection to the Matola terminal, inaugurated a year ago, and a new filling line for tanker trucks.

In addition, a storage terminal for liquid fuels with a capacity for 60 million liters and six thousand cubic meters of cooking gas was built, allowing the product to be received by sea and transported by truck and train.

The Minister of Public Works, Housing, and Water Resources, João Machatine, recalled the government's commitment to promote the use of cooking gas to avoid the use of firewood and coal, as this practice causes deforestation.

"This massification is only possible with increased production and storage capacity," he clarified.

During the event, the President of Galp, Paulo Varela, said that his institution will guarantee cooking gas without interruptions in its supply.

According to the responsible, the gas shortage will be "a thing of the past", as the plant - which benefited from renovation - operates at full capacity with the increased availability of the product.

With the start-up of Galp's new venture, Mozambique increases its production of cooking gas bottles from 27,000 to 33,754 bottles, an increase of 25%, or just over a million bottles a month, he said.

Source: Lusa