Customer service is being optimised through a partnership between ASCO and CLEANGAS

1. As a partner of ASCO, Cleangas carries out service calls for customers in Germany. What do you see as the mutual benefits?

In my view, the greatest benefit lies with the customer. We are geographically situated in the heart of Germany, so we have relatively short distances to cover for service calls nationwide. This saves time and money. Our mobile workshops are equipped with all relevant spare parts and specialist tools, enabling us to handle almost all service requirements on site. In addition, we have a large workshop area for more extensive service work or tasks that cannot be carried out on site. Following successful servicing, the machines are put through their paces here in a long-term test. This ensures the highest level of service reliability, particularly for pelletisers. On request, identical rental machines can also be made available here during longer-term service work.

For us as a service partner, the advantage lies in the fact that we maintain an extensive yet easy-to-manage spare parts stock. Equally important is the constant deployment of our trained service staff and our service vehicles, which were previously reserved solely for our own plants.

In CLEANGAS, ASCO has a service partner that can respond quickly to necessary service calls thanks to its own spare parts stock and brings a high level of service experience, particularly in the field of pelletisers, to ASCO customers. Thanks to the long-term tests (4–6 hours of dry ice production) and the rental machines provided by CLEANGAS, ASCO can offer its customers a comprehensive service of the highest quality.

2. Like ASCO, Cleangas rents out pelletisers to its customers. Who are the main customers and what is the trend?

‘Rental’ isn’t quite the right term here. We offer major customers two different models:
our main model is aimed at customers with an annual requirement of more than 150 tonnes of dry ice. Here, we provide the tank, ASCO pelletiser, CRYOBOXX boxes, raw gas (LCO₂) and all spare parts and servicing. We do not charge any rental fees for this; instead, the customer simply pays the dry ice price agreed in advance for each kilogram or tonne produced. Just as if they were buying electricity!

As an alternative to this, we offer an operating hours model comprising an ASCO pelletiser, including all spare parts and service calls, with or without CRYOBOXX boxes. In this case, only the actual operating hours are billed. The customer is responsible for the tank and liquid supply. This system is usually used when the customer already has a CO₂ tank and product on site for other applications such as refrigeration, anaesthesia or welding.

In both cases, the customer can calculate an exact unit cost without any ‘soft costs’. This is particularly in demand and necessary in the industrial sector with high volumes.
In our view, both systems are unbeatable in economic and ecological terms, as storage and transport-related sublimation, quantity redundancies and, often, a lack of freshness are a thing of the past. A high level of supply reliability is ensured through preventive maintenance involving the replacement of relevant wear parts. And should a machine ever break down, our short response times and replacement machines—which can be hired in the conventional manner—come into play.

Our main customers to date come from a wide variety of industrial sectors and food processing. In future, we see great potential in the online retail sector, where the focus is mainly on packaged dry ice products. Our dry ice box range also plays an important, complementary role here.

3. Cleangas is the largest online retailer in Germany. How is the demand for dry ice developing during the coronavirus pandemic?

We have made identical observations in our “Dry Ice Direct Shops” in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The online dispatch of temperature-controlled foodstuffs is increasing during the coronavirus pandemic, but certainly not solely for that reason. However, all events and festivals in 2020 were cancelled, and the hospitality sector also had to close for the most part in the spring and at the end of the year. These lost revenues cannot be offset by the additional online sales. The other sectors remained stable, with the exception of the lockdown periods. On balance, however, there is a small shortfall this year.

4. Are you preparing for the COVID-19 vaccine – what are your current plans?

That is difficult to answer. As for the parcel sector, I do not foresee any applications in the medium term, as vaccination is to be carried out via vaccination centres with high demand and stringent safety requirements, at least for the first year. Furthermore, there will not be a single COVID-19 vaccine that needs to be transported and stored at temperatures between –60°C and –80°C, but rather other vaccines with only minimal refrigeration requirements. Nevertheless, dry ice will certainly be needed and, in some cases, there will be no alternative. Therefore, there will be regional opportunities for dry ice supply where a temperature-controlled active ingredient is produced, stored or temporarily held. The demand for or sales of dry ice are therefore unpredictable, and we do not really factor this in, though we could react quickly thanks to our machine capacity of 3 tonnes per hour.

We see greater potential for our CRYOBOXX dry ice box range, as there will be additional global demand for dry ice boxes tailored to specific needs due to the necessary cold chains. We manufacture the boxes entirely in-house – ‘Made in Germany’ – based on the requirements of a dry ice producer.