Fuel retail businesses should be optimized
The country’s fuel market brings quite a lot surprises to all its operators every year. Both global economic processes and domestic consumers’ tighter wallets dictate transformation. Therefore the following questions become relevant: «What will filling stations sell?» «What will the price be, and how will they sell it?» In summary, «What kind of fillings stations do we need?» The results of a discussion of the topic were summed up at a third round table of experts and analysts, which took place on March 6.
According to a study conducted by the Psyche Center, since 2002 the number of filling stations in Ukraine has doubled from 3,300 to 6,380, not including motor gas filling stations and motor-car gas-filling compressor stations. While a decade ago, the share of modern filling stations in Ukraine did not top 15%, by 2012 it grew to 38%. New facilities include multifunctional complexes worth up to $1.5 million with an average sales volumes of fuel and other products of 300 tonnes per month. Nevertheless, about 38% of filling stations in Ukraine require full or partial reconstruction, and the required amount of investment usually exceeds the cost of building new gas stations because of growing technical and environmental requirements.
According to the Psyche Center, the construction of «turn key» gas stations on a site (without its costs) in the prices of 2010 cost from UAH 5.5 million (the area occupied by a gas station on 0.2 hectares with three pumps, 125 cubic meter tank volume, a gas station facility is 250 square meters) to UAH 13.5 million (0.5 hectares, seven pumps, 175 cubic metertank volume, 450 square meters). The costs of construction account for about half of a gas station, and the construction takes from one to one-and-a-half years (from two to three years in large cities).
Now in work are:
- traditional gas stations (about 3,100), with technological systems designed for refueling vehicles with liquid motor fuel only, and underground storage tanks separate from filling station pumps;
- block stations (about 2,300), their technological systems are characterized by the placement of fuel pumps over a fuel storage block, made as a single unit;
- multi-fuel filling stations (about 900), that refuel cars with two or three types of fuel: petrol, diesel fuel, LPG and/or compressed natural gas;
- motor gas filling stations (about 770, excluding gas nodules of multi-fuel gas stations) for fueling vehicles with liquefied petroleum gas;
- motor-car gas-filling compressor stations (about 320) for filling up with compressed natural gas;
- refueling outlets (about 560, not included in total statistics), placed on the territory of a company and designed to refuel corporate vehicles.
Of the 6,381 stations monitored by the Psyche Center, about a third are located in Kyiv, Sevastopol and regional centers, and the same number work in other cities. About a quarter of all gas stations do not work regularly (27%, it was 16% in 2008). About 800 stations, «assigned» to a particular locality, are placed along roads that have been assigned with one of four categories. Over 35% of urban and more than half of the branded gas stations were built or renovated after 2002 to meet new market requirements.
More than half (53%) of retail trade turnover from the sale of fuel is produced by 5% of businesses that own a third of the total number of gas stations. In turn, 54% of the volume of trade is goes to companies from eight regions (Kyiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk and Odesa region). The largest number of businesses that own gas stations are registered in Donetsk region (10% of the total number), the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, Luhansk region, Kyiv region, Kharkiv region, Odesa and Vinnitsa regions (from 5% to 6%).
Forty three percent of business entities and 40% of gas stations are concentrated in those regions. More than a hundred gas stations were run by ten companies.
You can read full article in journal «Terminal: Oil Review» №10 (596) 12 Mar 2012
