Miles Retail, which burst onto the Top 50 Indies listing in February having grown from five to 10 sites during 2023, continues to progress with its ambitious plans to be a 15-strong forecourt operator by the end of this year.
This summer the family-owned business, which operates in the Midlands, Wales and south of England, purchased Welham Green Service Station in Hatfield in Hertfordshire, and before that in February, Watlington Service Station in Oxfordshire.
It has two more sites that it is acquiring and are going through the legal process – one in Stratford-upon-Avon, which is undergoing a knockdown rebuild, and another in Putnoe, near Bedford – which should be complete in the next couple of months. That just leaves one site to find in London,or the south of England to hit its full complement, says operations director Sachan Maruthan.
Based in Kempston, Bedfordshire, the business has spent hundreds of thousands of pounds on both of its two most recent acquisitions, which have moved to BP, and which Sachan describes as having been low volume sites in need of investment.
The Welham Green Service Station, a village MOT centre and petrol retailer selling unbranded fuel, has been given increased shop space by building into part of the garage’s reception area. Londis will be the fascia and the site now has a food to go offering including Country Choice, Rollover and Costa.
Meanwhile, on the forecourt, the seventh the business has with BP, there is now premium diesel and unleaded petrol, as well as the original standard option, as well as new tanks and pumps.
As a result, combined turnover for the shop and fuel have tripled in the month that the site re-opened in July, with projections to exceed an annual total income of over £2.5 million in a few months.
And at Watlington Service Station, a former Murco high street site, close to J6 of the M40, the business introduced a large Budgens shop, with the Wild Bean micro-mart café unit, open daily from 6am to 10pm. Again premium fuel was introduced.
It is a compelling offer with sales set to continue growing from over £1 million now for both fuel and shop to close to £4 million by the end of the year.
Sachan says that the business will choose a shop fascia to fit its local demographics, and that it has Premier, Londis, Nisa Local and Budgens sites. It has a mix of fuel brands too – BP, Shell, Esso and Jet.
Having 15 sites will be the sweet spot, says Sachan, with the directors stopping their buying spree at that point to focus on developing forecourts already in their portfolio, says Sachan, who works alongside his family who own Miles Retail.
This will include introducing electric vehicle charging at its forecourts, with its Neasden BP forecourt in northwest London, already having received planning permission for a couple of chargepoints.
“Our focus will move to trying to consolidate and then to adopt a dual energy forecourt strategy,” says Sachan.
