Retail overview
With a growing footprint across the African continent, Retail is the core part of our business. Our modern sites provide our customers with access to high-quality products, services and increased convenience wherever we operate.
We cover a network of around 4,000 Shell and Engen branded service stations across 28 markets in Africa. The majority of sites are owned by us, but operated by local dealers, reducing risk and utilising local knowledge.
Our retail offering includes high-quality fuels and lubricants as well as convenience retail shops and quick service restaurants, and other services including lubricant bays for oil change, car washes and banking services.
We continue to expand our retail network to meet growing demand across the continent, building a new service station every three days on average. Additionally, we look to improve the customer experience at our sites, building on the successful launch of loyalty programmes in key markets, undertaking new fuel launches and providing the best and safest experience for our customers.
Retail fuels
We pride ourselves on providing high-quality products to our Retail customers and sell a wide range of differentiated, high-quality fuels. Because the majority of our markets have regulated fuel prices, we are unable to compete on price and so stand out from our competitors by providing these high-quality, differentiated, and premium products. Additionally, we offer a range of other non-fuel products and services for the convenience of our customers. This maintains the excellent reputation which our brands have.
Our fuel products are laboratory tested to ensure we sell the latest reliable fuels to retail customers across our 28 markets. We continue to innovate to guarantee that our fuels are as efficient and clean as possible, and to minimise our impact on the environment.
Where we operateRetail lubricants
We sell technology-leading, Shell-branded lubricants across the majority of our markets. This includes Shell Helix with PurePlus Technology, produced at our blending plants, which is derived from natural gas and which helps reduce CO2 emissions and save fuel.
Additionally, we sell Lubricants to commercial customers through products including the Shell Rimula brand. We cover sectors including passenger cars, motorbikes, construction, manufacturing, mining, power and road transport.
LPG
We sell LPG to both consumers and industry. For our retail customers, it is used for cooking and heating and is a cleaner alternative to energy sources such as coal. We provide access to LPG where possible as a transition fuel to replace carbon intensive fuels.
Vivo Energy markets and sells LPG in cylinders in 12 of our markets, and owns bottling plants in nine of these. The company markets its products under widely recognised brands, including Shell Gas LPG, Butagaz, Afrigas and GasIt in the Shell-branded markets; Engen LPG and Petregaz in the Engen-branded markets; and Somagaz in Mayotte.
Card services
We offer fuel payment cards and loyalty cards in our Shell-branded markets. We also offer fuel payment cards and loyalty cards in our Engen-branded markets. In certain countries, we offer customers the ability to use rechargeable prepaid cards to purchase fuel and pay for certain goods and services at our service stations.
Loyalty cards enable customers to collect points and other rewards when they buy products at our service stations. Since starting our first loyalty programme in 2015, we have deployed enhanced loyalty programmes across several of our countries.
As part of the loyalty programme, we offer targeted promotions at the forecourt to enrolled customers, sometimes in partnership with associated convenience retail brands.
For certain customers, including corporate fleet owners and businesses, we offer corporate cards. These allow select customers to refuel through the use of the corporate card and gives the privilege of prepaid or post-paid transactions. These cards also offer customers additional functionality, such as insight into their fuel spend.
Both payment cards and loyalty cards, along with promotions, ensure that we maintain a competitive advantage and strengthened our customer base by encouraging retail customers to return to our service stations.
Different loyalty card services are available in each of our operating units. Visit each of our Operating Unit pages to see what card services are available there.
Where we operate
Food
Our food offering is an increasingly important part of our portfolio. We have partnered with both internationally recognised and regional brands through local franchisees across most of our operating units. Quick service restaurants are an increasingly popular option in the food industry and answer our consumers’ desire for affordability and convenience.
We continue to innovate with our food offerings, and have been able to adapt to meet our customers’ changing demands, offering both onsite and offsite food outlets, including services such as pickup and delivery. At some of our service stations and adjacent quick service restaurants consumers can order food “on-the-go”.
We are selective in all our food and beverage offerings in order to maintain high standards of hygiene, health & safety, and quality.
Our current partnerships include:
KFC, Burger King, McDonald’s, Subway, Starbites, Java House, Panarottis, Papa John’s, Simbisa Brands, Spur Grill & Go, Pizza Hut, Domino’s, Nando’s, Pomme de Pain, Wimpy, Baguette & Baguette, Barcelo’s, Art Caffe, Hungry Lion, Baskin Robbins, Starbucks on the Go, Big Square.
We are always looking to expand our offering and establish new business partnerships. To enquire about potential partnerships, please visit our contact page.
Contact usConvenience retail
We operate ~2,000 Convenience Retail shops across our network in our 28 markets.
We have developed our offering with our shoppers in mind to delight them. We also have a home delivery services available in some markets. Aside from our Shell and Engen branded shops, we have established convenience retail partnerships with brands like SPAR and many others at different stages of development.
Other services
In addition to fuel, lubricants, convenience products and food, a broad range of other complementary services are typically offered to customers at our service stations. These can be either vehicle related (including car washing or lubricant bays for oil change), non-vehicle related offers managed through the company operating the site (including banking services, ATMs and mobile financial services) or entirely third-party offers paying rental fees to the forecourt owner (such as hair salons, pharmacies and dry cleaning, amongst others).
By providing quality services tailored to the needs of customers on-site, the multi-purpose forecourt is increasingly becoming a retail hub or a “one-stop-shop”, which customers use on a regular basis to meet their everyday needs.