Andy Smith, group forecourt manager of Westmorland, is the winner of the Forecourt Trader/Petroman competition for the installation of a full Petroman vapour saving system.

The new system, worth £18,000, will be installed at Westmorland’s Rheged service area in Cumbria, one of three motorway service areas owned by the company.

The system is designed to reduce stock losses by preventing petrol vapour being returned to the refinery through the vapour recovery system. The three elements of the system will be installed on the site in the next few months, and stock losses before and after the installation will be compared independently to test the system fairly.

The installation and results will be the subject of further reports in Forecourt Trader whatever the outcome.

Petroman managing director, Rodney Carter, said: "We have faith in the products, and we have proved they work time and time again. The only problem is that people always think the results are too good to be true, so we have had to do the convincing, one customer at a time. We decided that the only way to really prove how much we can save a forecourt was to give a system away and publish independently verified results."

The company reckons that, depending on fuel volume, the system can save sites as much as £10,000 per year.