nets gas stations proportion of alternative brands is accelerating their expansion in Spain. Over the years, the increase in the number of service stations in the Spanish market is almost entirely due to the opening of new low-cost formats; big fat.
Automatic gas stations, independent retailers, stations affiliated with hypermarkets and supermarket chains, cooperatives… low cost rising and growing deployment leads to branding of Spain a new record number of service stations on their way. At the end of 2022, when fuel prices reached record levels and the price crisis was marked by a discount of 20 cents per liter of fuel paid with public money; 12,084 service stations operate in Spain.
This is a new historical maximum in the number of gas stations in the history of the national sector after it was added last year. 274 additional sales pointsThe highest growth in the last six years1, according to the records of the latest annual report of the Association of Petroleum Operators (AOP), an employers’ association that brings together the major oil companies in the Spanish market1.
When Felipe González’s government ended the Campsa monopoly in 1992, Spain had just under 6,000 gas stations. After three decades of almost uninterrupted growth, the size of the gas station park has now doubled, with the exception of very rare slight annual drops during all this time, the last drops in 2005 and 2019.
The market was split in two
Last year, alternative brands—independent shops, hypermarkets, and cooperatives—added 280 new service stations at a total of 5,941 locations across the country, concentrating 49% of the national park. thirty stations, up to 6,143 gas stations (six fewer than in the previous year). teach me how Ballenoil, Plenoil, Meroil or Petroprix are some of the networks that have developed during this expansion of independent brands.
reply At the end of last year, it stood out as the main national operator in terms of outlets, with 3,304 installations, 27% of the national total, but nine fewer than in 2021. cesa By closing the year with 1,484 stations, it became the only major station to grow by 11 points compared to the previous year. Blood pressure With 781 centers, it closed the podium with three stations less.
With a relatively slow-growing fleet of approximately 33 million vehicles; with larger gas stations, more pumps and hoses than in other European countries with more cars and more purchasing power; and with a network doubling in three decades, the fuel sales industry has been warning of the risk of saturation and sustainability of each center’s business for years.
frontal collision
Last year, there was a fierce price war in the fuel sales industry. Big oil grids shook the market. Additional discounts to the mandatory 20 cents per liter One of the government’s commercial bulwarks, set up amid the energy crisis, making it harder for low-cost networks to seek offers at cheaper prices to compete.
Independent gas station associations have come to blame the three major oil companies for their pricing-based commercial and operational strategies before the National Markets and Competition Commission (CNMC), which has launched investigations and conducted searches at the headquarters of the major groups. High wholesale prices of fuel to small companies and aggressive discounts to customers of their own gas stations – according to complaints of ‘low cost’ – meant that industry giants were selling at almost zero profit.
It’s a kind of ‘clamp effect’ that makes it impossible for networks of small gas stations to compete on equal terms and pushes them away from the market for practices that could be considered ‘dumping’. below normal price or even production cost).