BioLite
Brooklyn — a camp stove that charges your phone off its own fire, and a business built so that campers in New York pay for cookstoves in Kenya.
Primus
Sweden, 1892 — the soot-free stove that lit a century of expeditions, now sharing a company with Silva and still assembling every burner itself.
Primus began in 1892 with the first soot-free kerosene stove — a Swedish invention that predates Silva's compass by four decades, which is fitting, because since April 2023 the two share a company: Primus-Silva Sweden AB, under Verdane. The famous expedition lore — Amundsen at the Pole, Everest in 1953 — we treat as brand legend until better sourced. What we can verify is more useful anyway: Primus assembles every stove itself, stocks spare parts for current and discontinued models, and runs an expedition service program. In a category of sealed disposables, Primus sells stoves meant to be repaired.
- 1892The first soot-free kerosene stove — the founding invention
- 2023Silva completes the acquisition; Primus-Silva Sweden AB forms under Verdane
- 320M SEKExpected combined yearly revenue announced at the merger
What we'd reach for
- OmniFuelThe expedition stove — burns gas, gasoline, diesel or kerosene, and field-strips for cleaning. The serviceability argument in one product.
- OmniLite TiThe titanium version — the same anything-burner, lighter.
- Lite+The integrated canister system — the fast-boil commuter of the line, for coffee and freeze-dried at speed.
- KinjiaThe two-burner camp kitchen — car camping done with actual simmer control.
- KuchomaThe portable grill, for camps where dinner deserves grill marks.
- Winter Gas canistersCold-weather blend that keeps vapor pressure up when ordinary canisters give up.
- Service kits and sparesThe quiet flagship — pump seals, jets and o-rings stocked for stoves the company stopped selling years ago.
Before Primus, camp cooking meant soot — wick stoves that blackened pots and lungs alike. The 1892 invention that founded the company was a kerosene stove that burned soot-free, by vaporizing fuel before burning it. It made the portable stove genuinely portable, and it made “Primus” the generic word for camp stove in half the languages of Europe.
If the founding invention story sounds familiar, it should — this site has told it before, three streets over. Silva invented the liquid-damped compass in 1933. Primus invented the pressurized stove in 1892. And since April 2023 they are one company: Primus-Silva Sweden AB, under the investor Verdane — two Swedish founding inventions sharing one roof and, at the merger, an expected combined revenue of 320 million SEK a year.
About the stories on the box
Primus lore says its stoves went to the South Pole with Amundsen in 1911 and up Everest in 1953. They are wonderful stories. We could not trace either to a museum-grade source in this pass — so on this page they stay what they currently are: brand legend, plausibly true, not verified. If the company’s stoves genuinely warmed Amundsen’s tents, an archive somewhere can prove it, and we’d be glad to upgrade the sentence.
Here is what we can verify, and it matters more to your next trip than 1911 does.
Stoves meant to be repaired
Three checkable facts define modern Primus.
It assembles every stove itself, in its own factory. It stocks spare parts for current and discontinued products — jets, pump seals, o-rings for stoves that left the catalog years ago. And it runs an Expedition Service program for the stoves that go far from help, with the usual exclusions for receipts, shipping and misuse.
In a category drifting toward sealed, disposable boil-systems, that is a philosophy. The OmniFuel is its flagship expression: a stove that burns canister gas, gasoline, diesel or kerosene — whatever the country you’re in actually sells — and field-strips with a multi-tool. Buy one stove, feed it anything, fix it anywhere. The titanium OmniLite Ti is the same idea for gram-counters.
The rest of the range covers the spectrum honestly: Lite+ for fast-boil simplicity, the Kinjia two-burner for car camps that cook real food, Winter Gas blends that keep working when ordinary canisters freeze into uselessness.
Where Primus fits
Expeditions and cold trips. OmniFuel/OmniLite and Winter Gas — fuel flexibility and serviceability are worth their weight exactly where resupply isn’t.
The camp kitchen. Kinjia and Kuchoma, alongside a Gerber ComplEAT set and a BioLite stove — the Cooking shelf of this site now has an old master on it.
Anyone who keeps gear for decades. The spare-parts shelf is the product.
Not for: the pure ultralight-boil buyer — integrated systems from the usual suspects are lighter and cheaper for freeze-dried-only trips, and Primus’s own Lite+ concedes the category exists. Not for indoor cooking, ever; burning fuel needs ventilation, full stop.
Why we rate them
The founding invention is the industry. Pressurized, soot-free portable cooking starts here, in 1892, with or without the polar footnotes.
Serviceability is policy, not nostalgia. Self-assembly, deep spares, expedition service — structural commitments a marketing team can’t fake.
The honesty holds at the legend. A company whose true history is this good doesn’t need the unverifiable parts, and neither does this page.
When the stove has to light in a place with the wrong fuel and no shop, we reach for Primus.
More in Camp & carry
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Jetboil
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Optimus
A Stockholm stove name from 1899, now one of the brands the Swiss Katadyn Group assembled — with a brass stove still in the catalog that predates most of its competitors' companies.