Portobello causes another earthquake at ‘cheap’ petrol stations after Plenoil purchase

The New Significant Corporate Movement in Business inexpensive gas stations. The Spanish manager Portobello Capital and the American fund Tensile entered into an agreement onbuy and take control of Plenoil, the largest network of low-cost service stations in the Spanish market. The move comes just two months after Cepsa announced it was moving to a low-cost operation with its takeover of Ballenoil.

The Portobello consortium and Tensile acquire a majority stake in the Plenoil petrol station chain, which until now belonged to the four founding partners, and the fifth founder and current General Manager Jose Rodriguez de Arellano, will retain his shareholding and continue to lead management.

The new partners intend to develop a strong expansion plan to double the size of the petrol station network in three stages, moving from 224 current gas stations to at least 500 in 2027 for which in many cases it already has offices, and this year the group will also begin its activities in Portugal.

All Plenoil filling stations, founded in 2015, operate with an automatic customer payment system directly at the filling stations themselves, and the group plans to ensure that by the end of this year more than 75% of all its filling stations also have the ability to recharge electric vehicles.

“After more than seven years of success and positioning ourselves as a leader in the automatic petrol station sector, we are very proud that investors of the caliber of Tensile and Portobello have decided to invest together again in our country and in particular in Plenoil. This will allow us to accelerate our growth in Spain and Portugal,” emphasized José Rodríguez de Arellano, CEO of Plenoil.

“Low Cost” as an Accelerator

Chains of alternative petrol station brands are driving the expansion of the sector in Spain. Over the years, the growth of the number of petrol stations in the Spanish market has been driven almost exclusively by the opening of new low-cost formats of sales outlets, which are increasingly taking traditional chains into the hands of the oil majors. companies (Repsol, Cepsa, BP, Disa or Galp).

Automatic petrol stations, independent retailers, stations associated with hypermarket and supermarket chains, cooperatives… These are the “low-cost” formats that are gaining popularity, and their growing prevalence has led Spain to set a new record for the number of service stations in its roads. There were 12,084 filling stations operating in Spain at the end of 2022, a year marked by record fuel prices at the height of the energy crisis, according to the Association of Petroleum Operators (AOP), an association of major oil companies.

When Felipe Gonzalez’s government ended Campsa’s monopoly in 1992, there were just under 6,000 gas stations in Spain. After three decades of almost continuous growth – with the very rare exception of small annual declines throughout this time, most recently in 2005 and 2019 – the size of the gas station fleet has now doubled.

Cepsa enters the low-cost market

The Spanish gas station market is now divided into two parts. Alternative brands – independent brands, hypermarkets and co-ops – already account for 49% of the shares. national petrol station, and all the major groups integrated into the employers’ association AOP have once again lost outlets altogether. Cepsa, the second largest oil company in the Spanish market, has taken a strategic step to break this trend by joining forces with “low costs”.

Last November, Cepsa announced the acquisition of low-cost petrol station chain Ballenoil, which has around 200 petrol stations. The oil giant will thus add more than 2,000 filling stations in the Iberian Peninsula (1,500 in Spain and another 300 in Portugal). Cepsa intends to retain the Ballenoil brand and will continue to operate its low-cost business model, driving its growth with the goal of reaching 500 Ballenoil filling stations in 2027, the same level that Plenoil aims to achieve.