To purchase liquid oxygen suppliers on a large scale, preference can be given to docking with global industrial gas giants. Linde operates more than 200 ASUs worldwide with a total liquid oxygen capacity of 5,000 tons/day, and its 2022 annual report shows that companies with long-term contracts of more than five years can receive a discount of 8% to 12% of the unit price, and the evaporation loss rate can be as low as 0.2% per day for customers with a transport radius of 300 kilometers. Air Liquide launched 12 Asia regional tank centers (100 to 500 tons per tank) in the “Hub-and-Spoke” mode, with the capability for emergency orders within 72 hours, and in 2021 it supplied 8,000 tons of medical liquid oxygen per day in India due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Transportation cost is 35% lower than cross-country dispatch.
Regional top suppliers are another good option. In China, for example, Hangoxygen has designed 40 liquid oxygen storage tanks (20-200 tons capacity) in the Yangtze River Delta region, compressed the cost of production to 0.25 yuan/cubic meter (industry average 0.35 yuan) through cold energy recovery technology, and launched “flow ladder pricing” for steel enterprises, and the unit price decreases by 5% when monthly consumption exceeds 1,000 tons. Matheson Gas in the US utilizes a regional pipeline network (80% coverage of the Midwest industrial areas) to stabilize the liquid oxygen transport pressure at 1.6MPa ±5%, and maintain a purity of above 99.6%, lowering $12 million of supply chain spending for Tesla’s Gigafactorium in 2023.
Industrial gas B2B platform for improving procurement efficiency. For example, German industrial gas trading platform GasHub has reduced the procurement cycle for liquid oxygen from 14 days to 72 hours by matching supply and demand through algorithms, with a commission rate of only 3% to 5% (8% to 10% through traditional channels). According to the platform’s 2022 data, purchasers with bulk orders (≥500 tons in a single order) are offered an average price discount of 15%, and quality deviation compensation through smart contracts (5% of order value is payable when purity deviation is ≥0.3%). The OxyGuru platform in India aggregates 200+ small and medium sized liquid oxygen vendors, reduces transport delays from 18% to 3% via real-time logistics tracking (positioning error <10 m), and delivers 23,000 tons of liquid oxygen to hospitals on an urgent basis during the oxygen crisis in 2021.
Cost advantages are offered by emerging market clusters. Middle East is relying on low-cost natural gas feedstocks, liquid oxygen production costs as low as $0.18 / cubic meter (Europe $0.28), e.g., the Air Products facility in the Ras Laffan Industrial City in Qatar, which provides 15% of the world’s liquid oxygen exports, and through the LNG tanker cold energy recovery technology to reduce energy consumption by 40%. Southeast Asian investment is lured by policy incentives – Vietnam will reduce import tariffs on equipment for the manufacture of liquid oxygen by 50% in 2023, so local suppliers have increased production capacity to 1,200 tons/day, and the price is 22% lower than international brands.
In the case of special applications, industrial gas recyclers are worth consideration. EconFluid, a German company, liquid oxygen recovery technology can reclaim liquid oxygen at 99.5% purity from steel mill exhaust gas (recovery rate 85%) at only 60% of the cost of traditional production. In 2022, in a partnership with ThyssenKrupp, it will reclaim 150,000 tons of liquid oxygen and prevent 120,000 tons of carbon emissions a year. Praxial launched a liquid oxygen recovery service for the space sector, reprocessing the residual liquid oxygen after rocket launch (temperature -183°C±2°C), to assist SpaceX in saving 18% of fuel cost per launch.
Compliance and risk control must be quantitatively confirmed. In the acquisition of a liquid oxygen supplier, ASME BPV certification (tank design pressure ≥1.25 times working pressure) and ISO 13485 medical compliance certification (microbial contamination <1 CFU/mL) must be required. In 2020, a hospital in Brazil purchased uncertified liquid oxygen (50 times the standard particulate matter), resulting in a 25% increase in the failure rate of ventilators, and the compensation for subsequent lawsuits totaled $20 million. On the other hand, liquid-air liquid oxygen production takes triple quality control (online monitoring frequency 1 time/second), the standard deviation of purity is within ±0.05%, and the whole process traceability is realized by the blockchain.