With the Cost of Helium Increasing, Let's Take a Look at Air-Filled Balloon Delivery and Decor Solutions!

As we are all likely aware, helium prices are rising and availability is becoming more limited. This means it is time to start thinking about creating more air-filled designs and decor! That does not mean that we should not be using helium, but if you are, you should think of different ways to keep your helium costs down! 

Let's start with keeping helium costs down. There is a great post by Balloon Biz Academy, written by Sonia Payne where she gives 10 Great Cost Busting Tips for Helium use in your Business 

So let's look at some air-filled creativity!

Air-filled decor has been steadily increasing for a number of years now. There are many balloon businesses that do not work with helium at all, offering only air-filled dećor featured with props and backdrops to enhance their installations! When it comes to deliveries, the perfect solutions (although not my favourite to make as they are time consuming and tend to use a lot of tape and glue) are Balloon Stacks, or Balloon Marquees, as they are also known as. Check out these popular hashtags: #balloonstack and #balloonmarquee

Jackie Ochitwa, CBA of With a Twist in Alberta, Canada always creates the perfect 'Balloon Stacks'!

They are fun, exciting and packed with all those extra little details! 

Air-Filled Balloon Decor with Props

Organic balloon displays that are 100% air-filled have been trending for quite some time now, and they don't appear to be waning in popularity! There are many companies that only offer organic balloon displays, and are able to run very successful balloon businesses.

This fantastic balloon display below was created by Blow it with Bex,  based in Southampton, UK. Bex used 7" Qualatex Chrome balloons to create this stunning display on a popular wire-mesh frame with a Happy Birthday light-up neon sign and a touch of greenery... what's not to love! 

The design featured below was an installation created by myself and Nicci Gibson from Balloon Bouquets  based in London, UK. This decor was created for a Valentine's corporate event and was designed to allow guests to move around within a framed area. This design included balloons and paper accessories that gave it more visual texture.

If you would like to learn more about Organic Balloon Styling, check out my blog post - Exploring Organic Balloon Décor Styles  or visit https://theverybestballoonblog.blogspot.com/2021/07/exploring-organic-balloon-decor-styles.html

Balloon Walls

I love designing and making balloons walls! I have always found these to be very popular for events, especially for corporate clients. Balloon Walls can be made using round balloons in various different techniques, and QuickLinks for some truly amazing results!

Here are a few reasons why you might suggest a balloon wall to a client:

• Corporate logo
• Themed background
• Themed entrance
•  Photo or stage back-drop
• To enhance a trade show or exhibition stand

This fantastic QuickLink balloon wall is perfect for a child's space theme party. If you have never worked with QuickLink balloons, you should definitely try them out! As the name suggests, you can build decor very quickly using this type of balloon! 

Balloon Wall and Decor by Zoe Adam-Jones, CBA of Jazz Trading,
Queensland, Australia.
This wall was used as the stage back-drop at the Qualatex Event in Brazil, 2019.

This Balloon Wall welcomed guests into the Moscow Balloon Festival in 2019
Designed and made by Olga Baranova, CBA and Olga Samoilova, CBA.

To learn how to make this complete design visit  - even the 3' balloon is air-filled! https://vimeo.com/ondemand/bspsettingthescene1and2

Balloon Arches

When it comes to designing and building balloon Arches, you can really let your creativity go wild! Featured below is a fabulous selection of arches. I love all the different themes, and the mix of balloon types, all offering a great contrast in texture.

Jungle Theme Arch by
M & M Balloon Co. in Seattle, USA

This Football or Soccer theme arch was designed by
Cam Woody of Pioneer Balloon Company.

This Disney Theme Arch was designed and created by
Keith Stirman and Dominic Cassidy of All Things Fun in Durham, UK.

This fun Jungle theme arch design was the work of 
Keith Stirman and Dominic Cassidy of All Things Fun in Durham, UK.

There are so many opportunities to create appealing air-filled decor. If you would like even more inspiration, check out these great pages on the Qualatex website! 

Air-Filled Solutions for Retail

Air-Filled Solutions for Decorators

Many of the high street chain stores are turning away customers, as they cannot get any helium supplies. As a balloon professional, it is really important to find air-filled solutions to ensure that we can continue to grow our balloon businesses! 

Happy ballooning! 

Sue

www.suebowlercom

Follow me @suebowler

How Will the Balloon Industry Cope with a World-Wide Helium Shortage?

Many of us have experienced helium shortages before, and although it might seem to be majorly problematic, there are always solutions and alternative decor ideas with air-filled balloons that we can offer to our customers.

But before we look at alternative decor ideas, we should first try to understand the type of helium that is generally used within the balloon industry and why helium is in short supply. Especially because this might help when speaking with customers.

https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/interactive/2017/07/helium-production-world-170726095826950.html

Just to clarify, the 8% helium used by balloons includes weather balloons too, of which there are hundreds released twice a day world-wide.

This is an excerpt from USA Today - 10th May 2019

"A big reason for the shortage is that about 75% of all the helium comes from just three places: Ras Laffan Industrial City in Qatar, ExxonMobil in Wyoming and the National Helium Reserve in Texas, according to gas-trade publication Gasworld.com.

In Texas, the reserves are being depleted, while at the same time overall demand for the gas has been growing."

In the U.K., a statement was released from one of the top helium suppliers, which highlighted the differences in the various types of helium, as well as the future of helium.

"It's important to be aware that there is a distinction between pure, liquid and impure, gaseous helium. Gas companies prioritise supplies of pure, liquid helium for critical medical uses e.g. MRI scanners in hospitals, ensuring that they can remain fully operational.

Helium for balloons is a different product - it is impure and gaseous and produced as a by-product of supplying liquid helium for the MRI market - a market which makes up around forty percent of the helium business in the U.K. Impure, gaseous helium cannot be used directly in medical MRI scanners or in other applications that use super-conducting magnets. Impure helium can be recovered by the customers and re-liquified if the customer has the necessary plant on site, and if not, it can still be recovered and reprocessed in the balloon market. Historically, recovery has only been viable for large users of helium, but new opportunities are constantly being reviewed and implemented with customers to help them conserve and reuse their helium. 

For the future, there is still plenty of helium on our planet, with investments being made to bring various new sources on-stream in the coming years. The locations and environments of these new sources will mean the market prices for helium is expected to continue to rise, but making these investments will mean that helium will continue to be available fo many years to come. Rising prices in the market will also drive an increase in investment in the means by which customers can recover more of their own helium."

The Pro Environment Balloon Alliance (PEBA) recently issued the following information:

"Medical Helium is not used to inflate balloons. The helium used to inflate balloons is not pure enough for medical use. It is a by-product gathered during the production of medical grade helium. Instead of wasting this resource, it is collected and recycled. The sale of balloon gas offsets the cost of medical helium. 
According to an Australian Helium Gas supplier… The transportation of Liquid Helium from an ISO into a storage flask (Dewar) is a very meticulous process. Due to liquid helium’s sensitivity to warmer temperatures, the majority of the liquid helium boils off in the transfer process. Instead of losing this helium, the boil off is captured in a large balloon. This lower grade helium is then recycled and compressed into smaller storage cylinders which becomes part of the balloon gas supply.
If this boil off were not captured and recycled, a huge amount of helium would be lost and wasted in the process. This recycled helium is use for weather balloons, scientific purposes and balloon gas. Reductions in demand can also be experienced due to increased recycling and increasingly efficient use of helium.
The helium industry reports that non-essential market segments like the balloon industry sector are experiencing shortage of supply and absorbing large price increases due to the fact that essential markets receive their supply first. 
The shortage is due to a number of factors that include global economic forces, political issues, rationing and unscheduled maintenance on a large helium facility. 
Due to these fluctuations of supply and demand, the balloon industry is decreasing its reliance on helium by increasing our use of air-filled designs. Shortage and price increases provide incentives to reduce helium consumption and the industry is evolving accordingly. We are already reducing our helium consumption by stopping balloon releases, this is environmentally and economically responsible." 

While we often read in the press that party balloons should be banned to save helium reserves, in reality, if we are using balloon gas, we are using a product that has already been used for medical purposes, and we are merely using a recovered product that is no longer suitable for medical or other specialist purposes.

We may never knowing the true and accurate reason for the shortage or why it's currently so difficult to obtain. Dan Flynn, COO of Pioneer Worldwide shared his findings;

“There are mixed signals from the major helium suppliers as to the expected timeframe before the market tightness is over. Most estimates are the supply will be restricted throughout this year, though availability should increase in 2020.”

So rather than getting upset about this problem, we need to embrace it and find good alternative solutions of which there are many.

Have you seen the latest on-line edition of Images Magazine? To remedy this current shortage, the entire issue features only air-filled designs and decor ideas! Click HERE for a direct link.

Here is one of the fabulous new designs by Sam Jossie, CBA, Pioneer® Balloon Company

If you use the search facility in the Balloon Decor Inspiration gallery and set the search to Air-Filled designs, you get over 600 results! 

Who wouldn't love this wonderful entrance decor, designed and created by Luiz Carlos da Costa Silva, CBA, of Cenário Balões, São Paulo, Brazil.

For more inspiring ideas check out some of my older blogposts that are packed with air-filled decor designs! 

From Traditional to Contemporary Jungle Party Decor Ideas.
Air-Filled Decor is the Only Way To Go! 
Fun, Quick, and Highly Sellable Air-Filled Balloon Characters - Step by Step Video
Finding the Perfect Air-Filled Decor Solution

I would love to hear how you are coping with the helium shortage and what alternatives you are using!

Happy ballooning!

Sue
www.suebowler.com
#suebowler