For many manufacturers and processors in New Zealand, nitrogen is as essential as electricity or water. It plays a critical role in everyday operations, from purging tanks and packaging products in wineries and breweries, to preserving fresh fruit and vegetables, and protecting materials during laser cutting. Without a reliable nitrogen supply, production slows, quality suffers, and costs quickly add up. 

Despite this, many sites are still relying on costly, inefficient supply from bottled nitrogen. Switching to an on-site nitrogen generator is often the smart choice, allowing you to take your nitrogen requirements into your own hands, reducing costs, improving reliability, and creating a safer, more efficient plant. Here’s how: 

1. Eliminating the Hidden Costs of Bottled Gas 

When looking at the cost of bottled nitrogen, the cylinder cost is only part of it. There’s a number of additional costs which can be eliminated by making the switch to a nitrogen generator. 

• Rental and delivery fees – You pay rental fees, fuel surcharges and freight whether you are using the nitrogen or not. Over time, these costs can increase significantly. 
• The cost of unused gas - Most processes need a minimum pressure to run. Once a cylinder drops below that, it is treated as “empty” and sent back. In practice, that means returning cylinders with 10–20% of the nitrogen still inside. 
• Boil-off losses in liquid tanks - If you are using liquid nitrogen, you can lose up to 1.5–2.0% per day to evaporation. Leave a tank sitting over a long weekend and a noticeable chunk of your inventory simply vents to atmosphere. 

A nitrogen generator often proves to be a much more cost-effective option when compared to bottled nitrogen. If your site is already using around one manpack of nitrogen per week, the expected payoff period for switching to an on-site nitrogen generator is typically only around 12 months. 

2. “Right-Sizing” Purity for Maximum Efficiency 

With bottled nitrogen, you get whatever purity your gas supplier chooses to provide. This is usually ultra-high purity (99.999% or “5.0 grade”) because it simplifies their logistics. 

However, many applications don’t need that level of purity. 

Typical requirements look more like: 

• Food packaging: 98–99.5% 
• Wineries: 98-99.5% 
• Breweries: 99.9% 
• Laser cutting: 99.9–99.999% 

With a nitrogen generator, you can choose from models which produce purities of 95%, 99%, 99.9%, or 99.999%, meaning you can choose the purity level you actually need instead of paying a premium for very high purity. 

3. Guaranteeing Supply Chain Reliability 

With bottled nitrogen you are relying on an external company to be able to deliver on time and as needed. Weather, driver shortages, traffic disruptions, or simple admin errors can all lead to missed deliveries. When that happens, production stops. 

With an on-site generator, nitrogen becomes an embedded part of your utilities: 

• On-demand production, 24/7: As long as your compressed air system is running, you have nitrogen. No more mid-shift surprises or scrapped batches due to low pressure. 
• Operational focus, not logistics: Your team stops spending time chasing deliveries, reconciling cylinder counts, processing multiple invoices, or wrestling heavy bottles into place. They can focus on maintaining plant performance instead. 

For operations and maintenance leaders, this move takes one more vulnerability out of the system and gives you a more predictable, controllable plant. 

4. Improving Workplace Safety and Freeing Up Space 

High-pressure cylinders and liquid nitrogen tanks come with real safety and handling risks. 

• Cylinders are heavy and awkward to manoeuvre, causing potential strain on your workers’ bodies, as well as risk of crushing fingers or toes. 
• If a valve is damaged, a cylinder can become a dangerous projectile. 
• Liquid nitrogen adds cryogenic hazards and the risk of oxygen displacement in confined or poorly ventilated areas. 

On-site nitrogen generators, by contrast, are fixed, enclosed systems operating at significantly lower pressures. Once installed and commissioned, they sit in place and quietly do their job. 

Nitrogen generators can be installed in a separate area, out of the way, freeing up your vital production space. We have done installations in sheds, containers, and even did a full nitrogen and compressor system on a mezzanine at Wineworks, allowing them to maintain their full production floorspace (you can read that case study here). 

5. A More Sustainable Choice 

There is also a clear environmental argument for moving away from bottled nitrogen. 

The traditional model depends on: 

• Large, energy-intensive cryogenic plants to liquefy and fractionate air 
• Regular diesel truck movements to move heavy steel cylinders and tanks between supplier and site 

On-site nitrogen generators use significantly less energy per delivered cubic metre compared with cryogenic production plus transport. By producing nitrogen where it is used, you also eliminate the emissions tied to regular truck deliveries, often hundreds or thousands of kilometres per year. 

Key Takeaways 

• Save Money: Remove cylinder rental, delivery fees, and wasted gas from heels and boil-off. For sites using about one manpack per week, typical payback is around 12 months. 
• Improve Reliability: Generate nitrogen on demand and avoid downtime from missed deliveries. 
• Enhance Safety: Eliminate regular handling of high-pressure cylinders and reduce cryogenic risks. 
• Go Green: Cut the emissions tied to truck deliveries and energy-intensive off-site production.