Not everything in life is a popularity contest, but when it comes to gaining traction with readers, one of the key metrics is very straightforward: how many people read a story.
Out of the hundreds of articles we published in 2025, here are the 10 that resonated most with our audience.
1. Tanker-driver strike set to bring “severe disruption” to fuel supply
Our most-read story of the year was also one of the last stories we published in 2025. Charting a proposed strike from Certas tanker drivers over a pay rise Unite the union considered did not reflect inflation, this article accumulated more clicks than any other piece over the previous 12 months.
2. Prax Group administration costing retailers thousands of pounds a day in lost trade
The collapse of Prax, the firm that operated the Lindsey oil refinery in Lincolnshire, was a significant story across all media outlets, but with dozens of forecourt operators dependent on the site, and Prax owning dozens of UK filling stations itself, fuel retailers were at the sharp end of this calamitous episode.
We covered the story in depth across a number of articles, but it was our piece highlighting one retailer’s significant financial loss as a result of disrupted fuel deliveries that captured readers’ imagination the most.
3. Retailer says it is ‘make or break’ time for Harvest Energy-supplied sites
Our third most-read story also centred on the Prax collapse, this time with a specific focus on how retailers who had signed for fuel supply from Harvest, which was also owned by Prax, were coping with the debacle.
This piece detailed how Gill Marsh Forecourts had been able to organise their previous fuel supplier to step in where Harvest left off – though not before their tanks ran dry.
4. Fuel Market Review 2025: forecourt sector in rude health
While conventional news stories dominate this rundown, our Fuel Market Review, which each year looks at the state of the sector, was the fourth most-clicked page of the year.
Detailing everything from how many sites are signed up to which fuel suppliers, to granular retail and wholesale pricing data, the FMR is very much a ‘state of the sector’ report, and its longstanding popularity remains undiminished.
You can download the full report here.
5. Starbucks gives a shot to EG Group’s UK business
Take two big brands, in this case Starbucks and EG Group, and combine them, and it stands to reason that people will be interested, something that was very much the case with this story, which detailed how EG Group’s 157 Starbucks franchises were responsible for a significant upswing in foodservice growth.
6. Top 50 Indies report is testament to a sector that’s fighting fit
Hot on the heels of the Fuel Market Review, our Top 50 Indies report, published to coincide with the Forecourt Trader Summit, is the industry bible that sets out which forecourt firms are doing what.
Our 2025 Top 50 Indies report detailed several notable industry developments, including the debut of five new independent forecourt firms, while insights into litreages, shop turnovers and site numbers can be found throughout the document.
You can download the full report here.
7. Zuber Issa’s fantastic journey: exclusive trade press interview
Getting facetime with billionaires is notoriously tricky, while EG On The Move has been one of the more significant success stories to have emerged from the forecourt sector of late, so our interview with EGOTM boss Zuber Issa was bound to bring visitors to Forecourt Trader.
With practical details such as Zuber explaining how EGOTM invests in improving forecourt lighting; and macro insights including how operating a debt-free company gives headroom for expansion, our exclusive interview was something of a must read.
8. 87 forecourts up for grabs as administrators unpick Prax insolvency
Fallout from the Prax collapse grabbed headlines throughout the year and, around six weeks after the news initially broke, we reported what fate administrators saw befalling the 87 forecourts owned by the firm.
These would, the accountants considered, be sold off as a job lot rather than bought piecemeal, with the filling stations being considered sound commercial propositions.
9. Park Garage Group replaces Greggs with own-brand Bakery 79
Given Greggs has become something of a British institution over the last couple of decades, deciding to replace its in-store concessions with an own-label brand is a bold move – but that’s precisely what Top 50 indie Park Garage Group announced it was going to do in spring 2025, by which point it had already debuted its new Bakery 79 concept at a dozen of its forecourts.
Unsurprisingly, the launch of Bakery 79 was of keen interest to Forecourt Trader readers, who flocked to the article to learn more about Park’s decision, and the business case behind it.
10. MFG moves sites from Shell to Esso
As the biggest independent operator in the UK, all eyes are on MFG when it makes a significant move.
So when it began to emerge that a significant number of the firm’s 1,200-plus sites had switched from Shell to Esso for their fuel supply, our story detailing this ongoing trend became hot property on our homepage, generating enough clicks to round off our top-10 rundown of the most popular stories of 2025.
