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Published on July 21, 2007

The renovation is the first in 10-15 years and the inclusion of Thailand among the first countries to be chosen for the new look reflects Shell's confidence in the long-term growth prospects in the country, chairman Tiraphot Vajrabhaya said yesterday.

The company will start by renovating 50 stations in Bangkok with an estimated budget of more than Bt100 million, Simon Hirst, general manager of retail sales and operations, told the press.

He said the upgrade was a part of the parent's Retail Visual Identity project, which aims at changing the look of Shell service stations worldwide. It will focus more on the use of white to spruce up its identity.

Shell expects to spend about Bt2 million to renovate each of its 570 petrol stations around the country.

In addition, the company has focused on improving its service by joining the "mystery motorist" programme, a benchmark for service standards among Shell's stations worldwide.

Hirst said Shell (Thailand) received a service-standard rating of 86 per cent last year, while the average was 85 per cent. It aims to improve to more than 90 per cent this year.

"This programme will also boost our retail sales. As our research shows, if our score increases one per cent, it will boost our retail oil sales by 0.8 per cent," he added.

The company also plans to launch new products this year. However, he declined to disclose details.

Tiraphot said Shell targeted increasing its share of the Thai retail oil market from 16.2 per cent to 18 per cent over the next two years.

He said the overall market in the first five months had shrunk 5 per cent from the same period last year.

The overall industry average sales by Thai petrol stations is about 300,000 litres per month per outlet, but Shell stations have recorded average monthly sales of 450,000 litres. Shell will maintain total retail oil sales at 2.7 billion litres this year.

The chairman said the company was always looking for opportunities to expand its retail business here.

However, it prefers focusing on improving the quality and service in existing stations rather than opening new outlets at the moment.

Moreover, Shell plans to start selling biodiesel-2 in the last quarter. To encourage gasohol consumption, it will replace octane-91 or octane-95 petrol with gasohol-91 in all its Thai stations.

Chalida Ekvitthayavechnukul

The Nation