Bangchak Petroleum announces expansion plans for retail business

Thailand’s Bangchak Petroleum Plc plans to invest BHT 15 billion (USD 427.5 million) in revamping its retail oil and non-oil businesses over the next three years, according to Pongchai Chaichirawiwat, senior executive vice-president for marketing.

The first phase will involve adding 300 service stations to the current 1,000 outlets nationwide by 2019.

The second phase will involve the acquisition of a European food-store chain franchise, which will be co-located at the company’s retail outlets.

The third phase will involve establishing a new company, Bangchak Retail Co. (BCR), so as to give more focus to the company’s non-oil business.

Bangchak Petroleum also plans to upgrade and remodel about 400 of its existing service stations.

“This will be the biggest change to our oil-retailing business in a decade and it will be revealed to the public by the end of this year,” said Pongchai.

The pilot project for Bangchak Petroleum’s service station modernisation plan was conducted at two service stations on Ratchaphreuk Road and Kanchanaphisek Road in Bangkok early this year.

Bangchak Petroleum expects its market share to get a boost from these investments, projecting its market share of the retail oil sector to increase from 15% to 20% by 2019.

Consequently, Bangchak Petroleum estimates earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) from its retail oil business to increase by 66% to BHT 5 billion (USD 142 million) by 2019, from its projected revenue of BHT 3 billion (USD 85.5 million) in 2016.