All Latest News articles – Page 299
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News
Light commercial vehicle sales slip
The latest light commercial vehicle sales figures were down 0.6% in July but are still up 6.5% for the year-to-date. Van sales dipped 2.6% last month but remained 9.3% ahead year-to-date. “It is positive to see that the commercial vehicle market remained stable during July, with a healthy increase in ...
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Autogas opens new facility in Grimsby
LPG supplier Autogas has opened its first refuelling facility in Grimsby at the newly rebuilt Shell petrol station on Moody Lane. Autogas invested in excess of £67,000 putting the new autogas LPG refuelling facility in to the site as part of Shell’s full refurbishment of the facility. It means that ...
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Car auction value and volume up
The average value of used cars sold at auction increased from £4,828 to £4,862 in July and the total volume of sales rose 6% from 83,637 units to 88,697 units, according to the National Association of Motor Auctions (NAMA). NAMA chairman Justin Lane said: “During the first two weeks of ...
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Spar to advertise on TV
Spar UK will be back on shoppers’ TV screens for the first time in four years, as part of a £5m national multi-media campaign, kicking off in early October. Featuring TV and digital advertising, a customer magazine and in-store communication, Spar’s new campaign is intended to celebrate its convenience and ...
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Subway opens 4,000th European store
The Subway brand has reached the milestone of 4,000 stores operating in Europe with the opening of the latest outlet in the Gara de Nord railway station in Bucharest, Romania. The first European Subway store opened in the UK, in Brighton, in 1996. Since then the brand has expanded its ...
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Shock new figures undermine OFT findings
January’s Office of Fair Trading (OFT) report on the road fuel market has been seriously undermined by new market share figures for supermarkets released by the Government. They show the supermarkets have a far higher share of the road fuels market than previously admitted. The latest combined total for petrol and diesel sees an increase to 46.5% in 2012. This compares with 39% for 2012 stated in the OFT report, which gave a clean bill of health to the way the market operates. The figure of 39% was also reported for 2011 in a report by Deloitte – Study of the UK petroleum retail market. This report was commissioned and published last year by the Department of Energy & Climate Change (DECC), and was used by DECC as proof of the security of UK fuel supplies. The PRA said it was told the statistical data on retail fuel volumes since 2008 has recently been revised on the DECC website, after gross reporting errors were uncovered by officials. PRA chairman Brian Madderson commented: “5,000 forecourts have closed since 2000, another 175 closed last year and the independent retailers are continuing to get massacred by the aggressive discounting and below cost sales tactics by supermarkets. “There was considerable complacency evident in the Deloitte and OFT reports which assumed that supermarket volumes were levelling off and so the market was steady. However, we warned Government that the 2012 Christie study indicated that supermarkets are trying to open up to 50 new forecourts for each of the next four years.” “The data revision indicates that the average hyper sells 12 million litres per year and independents 2 million litres. Thus every new-to-industry opening by a hyper could suck up the entire fuel volume of six independent retailers in the local area and jeopardise the business of at least 10 existing forecourts every year if such expansion proceeded. This is will be bad for competition, bad for consumer choice, bad for jobs at local family firms and bad for rural communities.” Madderson added: “This re-jigging of key market information underpins our members’ real concern that the UK’s energy resilience for retail fuels is at stake. If this situation is allowed to continue, there will be an inevitable acceleration in the number of site closures to more than 300 per year. Thus there will be a severe worsening of supply resilience from fewer sites with low stockholdings. “This should ensure that our request to DECC for a round table review of the independent forecourt industry will receive the full attention of Michael Fallon MP, minister for energy, in the coming weeks.”
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GB Oils rolls out new card payment terminals
GB Oils is aiming to strengthen its dealer support package with the roll-out of the HTEC GemPAY card payment terminal. It says it will enable dealers to process transactions up to 10 times faster while providing increased end-user security in line with the latest PCI DSS compliance legislation. GB Oils ...
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Police helicopter tracks drive-off car
A helicopter was involved in a police chase in Telford, Shropshire, linked to a crackdown on petrol thefts in the town. Sniffer dogs were also dispatched after two men drove from a forecourt with cans of stolen fuel. The police pursuit began after the men drove away from Sainsbury’s petrol ...
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New car sales growing strongly
New car sales figures have shown strong growth with month-on-month sales up 12.7% compared with July last year. Private registrations increased by 11.9%. Sue Robinson, director of the National Franchised Dealers Association (NFDA), commented: “It is extremely encouraging that new car sales continued to improve in July with year-to-date growth now at 10.3%.” “Consumer confidence continues to grow with the British Retail Consortium reporting an increase in high street retail sales of 2.2% during July. “Dealers are reporting increased footfall in showrooms as consumers are drawn in by new products and services offered by dealers and manufacturers. With such strong manufacturer and finance offers currently available dealers are reporting that it is proving much easier to close a sale. However competitive pricing and strong incentives remain important if the sales trend is to continue throughout 2013.”
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FPB welcomes Bank of England guidance
The Forum of Private Business has welcomed Bank of England governor Mark Carney’s comments on the merits of forward guidance alongside the bank’s quarterly economic forecasts today. Chief executive Phil Orford said: “Today’s revised growth forecast by the Bank of England will act as a further boost to business confidence ...
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Global ATM provider buys Cardpoint
Global ATM company Cardtronics has acquired Cardpoint, which trades as ATM services provider Cashzone in the UK. In conjunction with the deal, Cardtronics is introducing a new corporate identity for its European operations, Cardtronics Europe, which will include Cashzone and Bank Machine, Cardtronics’ existing UK subsidiary. Cardtronics chief executive officer ...
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Three suspected cigarette smugglers arrested
Three men have been arrested in Peterborough on suspicion of smuggling an estimated 8.3 million cigarettes into the UK and evading about £1.5m in excise duty. HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) criminal investigators, assisted by Cambridgeshire Police, arrested the men last Friday morning, 2 August, as the tobacco was being ...
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Former Costcutter boss advises KPMG
KPMG has hired Nick Ivel, the former group chief executive of Costcutter Supermarkets, as a consultant to advise the firm’s clients on their convenience store strategy. During Ivel’s 14-year tenure at Costcutter the annual turnover of the group increased from £198m to £650m. David McCorquodale, head of retail at KPMG ...
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Supermarket sales surge in heatwave
The July heatwave contributed to sales growth rates almost twice that achieved by the UK’s leading supermarkets during the London 2012 Games – one of last year’s peak sales periods – according to the latest retailer performance figures released by Nielsen. Aggregate sales value growth for the UK’s leading supermarkets ...
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Fuel thief sent to prison
A man has been sent to prison for 12 weeks following a drive-off in Northamptonshire last month. Noel Majores, 24, was one of two men convicted for fuel theft after they drove off without paying from the BP service station on the A43 near Brackley on Tuesday, July 9. Majores ...
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PRA welcomes plan to extend rural fuel rebate
The PRA has welcomed moves by the Treasury to extend the rural fuel rebate scheme. The Treasury has announced that it plans to seek permission from the European Commission to extend the scheme, which currently provides a 5 pence per litre (ppl) rebate to retailers in the Scilly Isles, the ...
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Water contamination strands Morrisons customers
A Morrisons supermarket in North Wales was forced to shut down one of its unleaded petrol pumps after fuel became contaminated with water and cars which had just been refuelled broke down on the forecourt. Around a dozen motorists were stranded at the Morrisons store in Ruthin Road, Wrexham, on ...
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First new generation Spar branded forecourt opens
The first of a new generation of Spar-branded forecourts in the UK has opened following the development of the concept by Spar and Harvest Energy. B & M Harland, in Pickering, North Yorkshire, which is owned by retailer Geoff Harland, features Spar branding on the canopy, pumps, poll sign and ...
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Manager critically injured in drive-off attack
Two people have been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder after a forecourt manager was critically injured during a drive-off. A 19-year-old man and a 16-year-old girl were arrested in Chatham in the early hours of this morning. Lekshmanan Asokkumar, who manages the Texaco garage in West Kingsdown, Kent, was ...
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Costcutter signs £35m refinancing deal
Costcutter Supermarkets Group has signed a £35m refinancing deal with Barclays. The group says the three-year term of the refinancing will support both business growth and the current transition period following the announcement in March that Costcutter Supermarkets Group has entered a strategic partnership with Palmer and Harvey for buy ...