Industrial & Medical Gases Nigeria Plc. (IMG Nigeria) is the largest industrial gases company in Nigeria and a leading supplier of industrial, medical, and food-grade gases, welding and medical equipment, and engineering services to the sub-Saharan African market. Founded 66 years ago, the company operates branches in 6 states, with its headquarters in Lagos and facilities in Port Harcourt, Kaduna, Warri, Ibadan, and Sagamu.
IMG Nigeria manufactures and distributes LPG across southern Africa, and its cylinder fleet is a direct input to order fulfillment. Without available cylinders, orders can't ship. For years, the business found itself in that position repeatedly — turning away customers not because of a lack of capacity, but because it couldn't locate or account for the cylinders it already owned.
"Cylinders are a critical part of our business," says Nurudeen Popoola, Head of IT and Digital Innovation. "The issue of availability was always coming up. We kept losing business because of a lack of cylinders."
The Board's response was to approve purchases of thousands of replacement assets. The shortages continued. Purchasing more cylinders, it turned out, was solving the wrong problem.
The root cause was the company's tracking infrastructure. IMG Nigeria had relied on an in-house Cylinder Asset Management System (CAMS) that couldn't reliably track assets once they left the facility. When CAMS proved too unreliable, teams migrated to Microsoft Excel and paper-based notes. The consequences compounded quickly:
Inventory totals were routinely overstated, giving planners a false picture of available fleet capacity
Real-time reporting was impossible, leading to order delays and slow responses to customer requests
Manual data entry consumed significant staff time and introduced errors that further degraded data quality
Employees developed their own tracking workarounds, fragmenting records across the organization
Capital continued flowing toward replacement purchases that addressed symptoms rather than the underlying data failure
Over several years, more than 35,000 cylinders were lost or unaccounted for.
"We were basically just throwing money away and wasting resources," says Nurudeen. "We could buy another 5,000 cylinders and know that in the next 2 years, we might not be able to account for them."
Without accurate fleet data, the business had no way to distinguish a genuine inventory shortage from a visibility failure. Nurudeen estimates the cylinder availability problem was suppressing sales by as much as 25% per year. The Board was spending capital to address a symptom while the underlying data problem went unsolved.
IMG Nigeria evaluated multiple vendors before selecting TrackAbout. The decision was informed in part by TrackAbout's proven performance at facilities within IMG Nigeria's former parent organization across Europe, South Africa, and the United States. Implementation had not previously extended to the Nigerian operations, but the track record was clear.
TrackAbout is now deployed across every function that touches the cylinder lifecycle:
Sales teams process orders against verified, real-time inventory counts
Finance and customer service teams access accurate asset and account data instantly
Drivers confirm deliveries and collections against up-to-date manifests
Maintenance teams receive inspection alerts and hold statuses tied to individual serialized assets
Management has a complete, auditable record of every cylinder's movement and history across all 6 facilities
Every stage of the cylinder lifecycle — from filling to delivery to return — is tracked and recorded. The scale of the problem became visible almost immediately. After implementation, IMG Nigeria's actual tracked fleet was confirmed at approximately 15,000 cylinders, not the 50,000 previously assumed. That gap represented years of undetected losses and, critically, gave the business a reliable baseline from which to plan for the first time.
"If you truly value your returnable assets and if they are critical to your business, then there is a need for you to track them," says Nurudeen. "TrackAbout improves your profitability, the productivity of your employees, and provides all the visibility you need."
The implementation required careful change management across a geographically distributed operation. Nurudeen acknowledges the transition was demanding, but credits TrackAbout's implementation team with making it manageable. "The implementation process was extremely thorough, and IMG Nigeria was supported throughout by TrackAbout's team of technical experts."
The operational impact of accurate fleet data extended well beyond the initial cylinder count correction.
Comprehensive reporting gave IMG Nigeria visibility into patterns that had been undetectable under the previous system:
Which customer sites had the highest non-return rates
Which facilities were generating the most maintenance exceptions
Where in the distribution chain cylinders were most frequently going missing
That data is now being used to retrain staff, adjust processes at specific locations, and make purchasing decisions based on actual fleet capacity rather than inflated estimates. Fewer replacement cylinders are needed because fewer are lost. Full asset traceability has also reduced theft by making fraudulent activity harder to conceal and easier to detect after the fact.
Because IMG Nigeria can now demonstrate to customers and auditors that every cylinder is tracked, inspected, and properly managed, the business has become a stronger commercial partner for compliance-sensitive accounts. Prospects, says Nurudeen, take confidence from the company's tracking capabilities when evaluating suppliers.
"TrackAbout improves your profitability, the productivity of your employees, and provides all the visibility you need," says Popoola. "Without it, our business would be severely disrupted and could not run."
See how TrackAbout gives LPG and industrial gas suppliers control over their returnable asset fleets. Request a free demo.