Petronas’ Engen plans acquisitions to double Africa business
p>Petronas’ Engen plans acquisitions to double Africa business
Engen Petroleum, a unit of Malaysia’s Petroliam Nasional, said it plans acquisitions and new sites to help double the number of retail outlets in sub-Saharan Africa outside of South Africa. The company plans to increase the number of gas stations to 1,000 by 2016 from about 500 across 18 southern African countries, Mike Cook, Engen’s international business retail manager, said recently in an interview in Port Louis, the Mauritian capital. “As more and more African countries stabilise, more people are becoming self-dependent. The car population is rising.”
Regional expansion will be led by Zambia, Zimbabwe and Mozambique and to a “lesser extent” by Botswana, he said. It will make purchases in Kenya to boost its “very small footprint,” while a mergers and acquisitions team is also looking at opportunities in Ivory Coast, Cook said.
Petronas, as the Malaysian company is known, owns 80 per cent of Engen, which plans to become the biggest petroleum marketer in sub-Saharan Africa by 2016, according to Cook. Engen, South Africa’s largest fuel retailer, bought Chevron Corp.’s assets in countries including Mauritius, Zambia and the French territory of Reunion, in December last year.
“We are trying to build at least 15 new sites each year over the next five years,” Cook said, with an investment of US$113mn in the period. It opened 29 new sites in 2009. Engen has 1,200 retail outlets in South Africa, where it will aim to hold onto its 27 per cent of the market, he said. Engen, which owns and manages a 135,000 bpd refinery in Durban that supplies neighbouring Namibia and Botswana, doesn’t have plans to open new refineries in the region, preferring supplies from existing operations, Cook said.
