Petrol station stores earned 84 million RON (23.3 million euros) at the end of last year, 6% more than in 2004 and almost 50% more than in 2000, according to a study conducted by Euromonitor. By 2010, this business is set to grow by a further 10 million euros.
Three quarters of the market are now controlled by Petrom-OMV, and the competition is already increasing, as MOL, Rompetrol and Agip also have serious plans.
The petrol station is no longer just the place where you fill up your tank with gas or diesel oil. Instead, it has been following the long-established western model: it is a service provider, where you can wash your car, but you can also eat in a restaurant, pay your instalments for a banking loan or even pay your utility bills.
The sales posted by filling station stores alone have come to account for 5 to 25% of the petrol stations' operations, according to estimates made by market players.
Until two years ago, when the petrol stations market was not even deregulated, sales in the stores were often even more profitable than the core business - the sale of fuels. Although there are currently over 2,140 operating petrol stations, out of which 848 belong to private owners, only 414 filling stations also have a non-oil business.
"Given the trend of acquisitions of petrol producers on the Romanian market, we can expect the competition between petrol stations to increase as well. So, companies will go to new lengths to attract clients, targeting among other things the development of a strong segment of stores in petrol stations. As part of the fight to survive in the face of the big networks, the independent owners will in their turn be forced to open such stores," the Euromonitor analysts say.
"Currently, quality fuel is no longer the key to success in a market with an increasingly fierce competition. The presence of these stores can attract a lot of consumers," reads the Euromonitor study.
The leading players on this market remain multinationals from the oil sector - OMV (Austria), MOL (Hungary), Eni (Italy), as well as the leading local players - Rompetrol and Petrom.
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