Calor

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Calor Gas LTD.
Type Private
Founded 1935
Headquarters Warwick, England
Industry Gas
Products LPG
Parent SHV Gas Group
Subsidiaries Autogas joint owned with Shell
Website Calor website
Calor is the Latin word for 'heat': In medical teaching, 'calor' is one of the four classical signs of inflammation

Calor Gas is a make of bottled butane and propane which is available in Britain. It comes in cylinders, which have a special gas regulator.

The 1950's version of these regulators was sometimes converted into the second stage of a diving regulator.

Calor was formed in 1935. Calor is the UK's leading supplier of LPG. It is currently servicing around 4 million homes and businesses. In the United Kingdom Calor is part of the SHV Gas Group, a private Dutch company.

History of Calor

  • In the 1934 the name "Calor" was coined and Calor begin trading a few years earlier. The company did not become official until 2 August 1935 when Calor (Distributing) Co. Ltd. was formally incorporated.
  • The business expanded as people in rural areas of the UK realised the benefits of this new fuel - LPG. So by 1939 the company had six offices in the UK: - a head office in London and five regional offices.
  • Calor (Scotland) had been founded and in Ireland, Calor gas was being distributed by Messrs. McMullen Ltd., which was later purchased by Calor.
  • In 1947, there was an exceptionally hard winter which led to a major change in the way that Calor was distributed. Up to this point Calor had been relying upon rail transport for the distribution of the LPG. Calor signed a contract with PX (Carriers) Ltd., to deliver cylinders by road.
  • The first wholly owned filling plant was built at Saxham, near Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk and a further two filling plants were built in the 1950s so it give Calor an even wider coverage. These two plants were at Millbrook near Southampton (1956) and Port Clarence near Middlesbrough (1959). The Millbrook filling plant was closed in 2001, however the sales and service centre remains selling gas heaters.
  • The 1950s saw the introduction of the Flavel B500 cooker, which used Calor gas; it became a great success story with caravan owners and smaller households.
  • 1956 saw the birth of Calor's industrial division and installation of the first 'bulk propane' tank at the Meredith & Drew biscuit factory in Newmarket.
  • In 1963 Calor Ltd. was formed.
  • 1966 saw a new head office being acquired in Slough, which led to over 300 employees moving into this location.
  • From the early 1970s onwards sales of cabinet heaters, and with them sales of butane in cylinders, escalated enormously, beginning with Super Ser which rapidly replaced the paraffin heater as the nation's number one choice for spot heating. In a decade, the market for cabinet heaters and the gas they burned grew from nothing to £100 million p.a. This led to increasing demand for storage space, which led to Calor investing in the two largest storage facilities. The first was purchased in 1976: a 30,000 tonne refrigerated storage tank at Felixstowe in Suffolk. The second was a joint venture with Conoco to excavate a vast underground cavern on South Humberside, capable of containing some 100,000 tonnes of gas supplied from an adjacent sea terminal. This facility, opened in 1985, gave Calor the ability to overcome short term supply difficulties and to cope with major changes in demand brought on by extremes of weather.
  • During the 1980s, Calor's domestic central heating and industrial markets continued to expand and in 1982 the company's head office moved to a 40-acre site near Slough.
  • Despite great efforts to establish a nation-wide network of outlets, Calor Autogas (vehicle propane) never quite reached expectations, due largely to the Government's inability to recognise its considerable environmental advantages by reducing duty. However, the fuel did become very popular for fork lift trucks, helped greatly by the launch, in 1989, of Calor's exhaust purification system, EPS2000, which enabled vehicles to be used both indoors and outside.
  • In 1988 the privately owned Dutch company, SHV became a significant shareholder, acquiring 40% of Calor's equity.
  • In 1991, a joint venture company involving Calor, SHV and Primagaz (in which SHV holds a 50% stake) had been started in both Poland and Slovakia. This was then followed with Hungary in 1992.
  • In 1997 SHV acquired all of Calor's shares.
  • In December 2005 The Canvey LNG project was announced which commenced with a feasibility study into the development of a strategic LPG import and regasification facility at the existing Calor LNG terminal at Canvey Island, Essex UK. This terminal is run by Bill Gosnold. The project is led by Calor Gas and also includes LNG Japan Corporation, (Joint Venture of Sumitomo Corporation and Sojitz Corporation). Following this study Centrica has now been selected as a gas supply partner and would hold equity in the facility, together with capacity rights enabling it to deliver supplies to their British Gas customers from a range of international sources. A full scale planning application and project plan is now being developed.
  • Unlike other fuel suppliers, as an LPG supplier, Calor Gas is not regulated by an independent Government regulator so there is no independent body or ombudsman their customers can turn to should they seek to complain or seek redress.

The company runs the Calor Village of the Year, the Calor Scottish Community of the Year competitions and is a member of the Business in the Community 'PerCent Club' investing more than 1% of its pre-tax profit in community projects.

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