All Analysis articles – Page 11
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AnalysisFighting Talk
A bleak picture has been painted of the future for independent fuel retailers following the publication of a report by the All Party Parliamentary Small Shops Group, which says that many are "unlikely to survive" beyond 2015 unless the power of the mighty supermarkets is reined in. The ACS, however, ...
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AnalysisPumping up shop sales
Fears that pay-at-pump technology could have a detrimental effect on forecourt shop sales have been dispelled in a new study by shopper research specialist HIM. The company interviewed 680 forecourt customers across 63 different sites at the end of 2005 and concluded that, in fact, the reverse could be true. ...
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AnalysisBuncefield Burner
On a normal day the Buncefield depot (Hertfordshire Oil Storage Ltd) provides the UK with 5% of its road fuel. But in the early hours of Sunday, December 11, 2005, that all changed. An explosion, and subsequent fire which lasted four days, destroyed around 20 tanks holding three million gallons ...
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Analysis
Time for pay at pump
There may still be teething problems, but now that the rollout of Chip & PIN is well under way, a seminar last month suggested that it was time for forecourts to fully explore pay-at-pump technology. The question was raised at a ‘Chip & PIN at the Pump’ seminar, organised by ...
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Analysis
Opposing fortunes
Oil companies face a huge dilemma over their retail strategies, according to Greg Hodge, retail analyst at Planet Retail, which specialises in analysis of the major retailers and retail markets worldwide.“The OFT’s approval of Tesco’s acquisition of 21 forecourt sites from Morrison’s has capped an interesting sequence of events in ...
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AnalysisPanic stations
Fuel crisis – what fuel crisis? And lo and behold there was a fuel crisis. It didn’t take long for panic buyers to come out in force, causing huge problems on the forecourts in the week beginning September 14. Nearly a week’s worth of fuel was sold within 24 hours, ...
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Analysis
Pole vault
The call to remove fuel prices from forecourt pole signs has gathered momentum following the publication of driver research which showed that the majority of drivers could not recall how much they had just paid for their fuel. And that is despite retail fuel prices – diesel in particular – ...
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Analysis
Drive-off chaos
The government’s attempt to downgrade drive-off crimes has been picked up by the Association of Convenience Stores, which is fighting on retailers’ behalf for the Home Office to reverse its new policy.Since new guidelines were issued in April this year, which appear to reduce the crime status of drive-offs, some ...
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Analysis
Breaking the chain
Independent retailers could be discriminated against by newspaper and magazine wholesalers if the Office of Fair Trading’s (OFT) proposals for magazine distribution become law, according to the National Federation of Retail Newsagents (NFRN). In response to the OFT’s consultation document on its draft opinion on newspaper and magazine distribution, the ...
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Analysis
Premier league
Once again ConocoPhillip’s Jet brand has trounced the rest of the industry in the third survey of retailer views of their relationships with suppliers.In the surveys published in 2001 and 2003, Jet also led the field while majors such as Shell in the first survey, and Esso in the second ...
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AnalysisCluster bombshell
Shell has been through many changes in the management of its UK company-owned retail network in the past decade – and it’s about to embark on another one. The last radical changes came towards the end of the ‘90s when, after several years trying to settle on a variety of ...
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AnalysisHot stuff
The high cost to retailers of wet stock losses was revealed in a lively discussion during one of the Working Lunch sessions at last month’s International Forecourt and Fuel Equipment Exhibition.Rikki Hunt, chairman and chief executive of Fuelforce, admitted to having discovered losses of more than £1million due to hot ...
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Analysis
Here comes Somerfield
Somerfield has become the latest supermarket to state its claim on the forecourt sector, following an acquisition of 140 Texaco sites for £90m. But as Forecourt Trader went to press, Somerfield announced that it was to sell these sites on to Palmer Capital Partners and Deutsche Property Asset Management, who ...
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Analysis
Staying power
Forecourt retailers with non-affiliated stores such as Forecourt Trader of the Year winners Peter and Pat Bellini, will be among those leading the convenience retailing market for the next few years, according to new research from the food and grocery think-tank, IGD. In its new report, ‘Consolidation in Convenience Retailing: ...
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Analysis
2005
PAUL SYKES MD Shaw Petroleum“We’ll see more sites closing in 2005. The supermarkets have been investing heavily, throwing money at our industry but they really don’t know what it’s all about, so there will probably be opportunities to take over some of these sites. We’d like to expand but only ...
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AnalysisSusie’s coup
Susie Hawkins hit the headlines last month when news travelled back from the NACS Convention in Las Vegas that she had fought off stiff competition from independent retailers in America and Australia to win the convenience store industry’s Global Scholarship. Women are a rare breed in the forecourt industry ...
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Analysis
Licensing minefield
The government has at last published its Draft Regulations for the new Licensing Act, giving the trade more precise information on how to apply for licences, the timescales involved and more detail about the requirements for the various documents that must be submitted with applications.February 7, 2005 has been announced ...
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Analysis
Sunny outlook
Independent dealers are now ‘catching up’ with oil companies in terms of the quality of their store operations, according to the latest report from the Institute of Grocery Distribution – Convenience on the Forecourt 2004. The report shows that most forecourt sites now have some form of shop, with almost ...
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Analysis
Coming of age
A trip to the petrol station has now joined meeting friends, watching a movie and going to the gym as a leisure pastime, according to research from BP Connect and Future Foundation, conducted to mark the 21st anniversary of convenience shopping on UK forecourts.‘The Leisure Report: Change in the meaning ...
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AnalysisHighland sting
The launch of the PRA’s fighting fund to tackle the integrity of wet stock deliveries has certainly struck a nerve – particularly on a forecourt in Scotland, where the owner, Frank Hamill, has been struggling to sort a serious problem out with his (now former) fuel supplier, Shell, for the ...