KOIL

Our unique, not-for-profit oil buying group

KOIL was started ten years ago by Sarah Langeveld and Amanda Edge. These civic-minded village residents felt there must be a more economic way for South Kilworth, which has no gas, to organise its oil supply.

In2011, after meetings in the village hall, they formed a simple group buying scheme which had just a few dozen members to start. Each month, if members needed oil, they would email their order to Sarah & Amanda who would pool the orders and negotiate a better price with suppliers.  They work unselfishly without commission and have saved villagers thousands and thousands of pounds in lower prices and zero commission.

The scheme has proved very popular (obviously) and many hundreds of members have joined from local villages, which all adds to Koil’s negotiating muscle.   Below is part of a note sent around by Sarah  earlier this year which gives some indication of the savings that have been secured for us all by this dedicated duo.

To join contact : admin@koil-group.com

‍

HIGHLIGHTS of KOIL's successful negotiations during previous year:
‍

• ‍23 orders have been placed with the new supplier, Bartons, from August 2019 to January 2021
• Over 750,000 litres ordered in total
• ‍Boiler Juice & YOBCO swung between each other as our price benchmark over the period
• ‍YOBCO have come the closest in the last 18 months, but we’ve still averaged just under 0.5p cheaper than them and on four occasions beat them by 1.5p - 2p per litre
• The Boiler Juice average price was 1.95p more per litre than Koil
• It's not easy to get Watson's prices these days, but we have done so on 5 occasions and found they were just under 3p per litre dearer, on average.
• While we never commit to being the cheapest, we have managed to achieve that consistently since we started out – there’s four times though, when the market has been super competitive, where we’ve had to settle for a ‘price match’ instead of a ‘price beat’. 

There’s no predicting where you would have all ordered your oil from, if not through us, but we do know that if EVERYBODY had ordered from YOBCO instead of us in the last 18 months, you’d have paid over £3,500 more for your oil in that time.  If you’d have ALL bought through Certas (Total Butler, as was) you’d have paid over £46,000 more!  So a little bit of savings collectively go a long, long way…

This editorial prepared by admin@southkilworth.co.uk