TL;DR: ChatGPT 4o “Deep Research” saved the day and helped me secure a nice stash.
We are camping in Sweden this summer. Managed to pack everything including possibly the biggest tent I’ve ever seen into our car, including the kids, and generally having a great time.
One detail I overlooked in the prep was ensuring we had either a sufficient supply or good availability of the special gas containers required by our camping stove.
If you’ve never given this any thought I can’t blame you, but there a many different types of gas cartridges – and even though most are using very similar butane/propane mix gas, there are several connection types that aren’t compatible with each other. A win for free markets I guess.
Our lock-in into the Campingaz “easy clic” patented system. traces back to camping at least 20 years. Initially had just the single burner, then added a gas light accessory in this system, then a 2-burner stove and here we are in 2025, still locked into a proprietary system for cooking our meals.
In concept, these canisters are kind of convenient. An advantage over many older ‘puncture once’ style systems is that you can disconnect and re-use across devices. They are widely available in southern Europe so I never really had cause to look further.
Until now: to our surprise, they are not generally available in camping stores in Sweden. Nor in any of the other usual places like big supermarkets or DIY stores. In Sweden, Weber and Primus seem to have a lock on the market. They use what I believe is called a EN417 fitting
There exist various adapters to use Easy Clic devices with other, more common fittings. If you think ahead, this might be one to put on your packing list to allow more flexibility. You’ll want to have an idea of the fitting for butane/propane mix canisters in your destination region to select the best option. Example adapter to MSF-1a Connection or Lindal Valve Connection. If you’re feeling brave you could also go direct to China
Now, for our purposes, since we’re already on the first campsite and quickly running out of gas, it seemed easiest to accept the challenge of finding a local supplier. DuckDuckGo showed that Reddit and other forums have quite a few discussion threads of people with this same challenge, and helpfully one had a link to Campingaz’ website Store Finder page.
Now for reasons I don’t quite understand vendor websites rarely offer a great experience. This one lives up to that expectation and the (Google powered) map doesn’t even load at all for me, but at least it gives me a list of retail locations near Goteborg, around 45 mins drive away.
Unfortunately; one shop seamed to be no longer in business, one only opened on Fridays between 10-16 and the final option listed, Hornbach (chain of home-improvement/diy stores), were fresh out of stock in all their nearby locations (although I considered to 250km drive to Malmo for a moment). Note to self: more internet research could have saved me at least one drive out to figure this out).
Back to the internet. Searching for the actual product name (CV470 site:.se) shows a scattering of stores across Sweden. The good part: they exist. The bad part: It is hard work to manually cross reference these search results, digging into store location and stock availability, and figuring out the proximity to my campsite. Remember, Sweden is a big place.
This is where ChatGPT actually proofed super useful. On a whim; I asked to do a ‘deep research’ for this product near my location. It took ten minutes, appeared to search for the different retailers and ultimately came up with several options – one only 25km away with 6 units in stock. I’m pretty sceptical of many AI use-cases but proofed to be a great timesaver.
If you want to avoid ChatGPT and the like at all cost, my advice would be to look for either boating- or camper specialist stores – they seem the most likely candidates.
