As reported yesterday, Gulf Oil, a whole owned subsidiary of Cumberland Farms Inc., has acquired all rights, title and interest to the Gulf gasoline brand in the United States from Chevron USA Inc. for the first time, [image-nocss] opening up the door to expansion opportunities across the country.
The deal comes on the heels of San Ramon, Calif.-based Chevron announcing in December its plans to withdraw motor-fuels operations from some areas of the eastern United States, including Delaware, Indiana, Kentucky, North Carolina, New Jersey, Maryland, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Washington, D.C., and parts of Tennessee.
That December 7 announcement left Gulf Oil "behind the eight ball" in jumping at the rebranding opportunities it presents, Dery told CSP Daily News.
"I'm sure after the announcement was made, many of these distributors and dealers were already investigating what their options are," he said. "And our hope is that we make a grand splash in the Mid-Atlantic, particularly through these available opportunities."
The process has already begun, he said, with Gulf applying for business licenses in states where it hasn't operated previously. The company is also orchestrating the necessary supply relationships and expanding relationships currently in place to gain a foothold in the market as quickly as possible.
"This is a good opportunity for us, since those sites are essentially free agents for us to go in and try to transition from the Chevron and Texaco brand to the Gulf brand," Joe Petrowski, group CEO of Cumberland Farms/Gulf Oil, told CSP Daily News. "And I think much to Chevron's credit, they see that this will help those business people by allowing us to come in with the Gulf brand."
Petrowski expanded on the company's upcoming plans. "The first priority will be the exiting Chevron and Texaco stations in those states that Chevron has announced that they're getting out of, because those customers are available. Then it makes sense for us to expand somewhat contiguously, which means focusing on Maryland, D.C., Virginia, then down to the Carolinas."
He added, however, that the company is not opposed to "leapfrogging" to other states, if the right opportunity presented itself. "The No. 1 aspect to drive where we will go first is: Where do we think there are opportunities? And two is: Where can we get a critical mass of stations? Because to really be an effective brandboth to have the scale of delivering product at a competitive price, as well as delivering any of the other serviceyou need scale.... We're not going to put one station in a state, because we frankly wouldn't be able to serve that station in a manner that will make us proud."
Petrowski said that the company is also looking to Florida for opportunities, since Cumberland Farms has 65 stores there and the company has other properties there under open dealers. "One thought has been to brand-up those stations, introduce the flag into the state of Florida [where it has been absent for 20 years], and then build our network around that."
He said that the deal would not have immediate effects on Cumberland Farms, but added, "I think the fact that Cumberland Farms possesses a tremendous amount of expertise in real estate, construction, environmental and convenience retailing allows us to have a platform to start to leverage those capabilities onto the Gulf side to develop those products for Gulf across the nation."
Gulf Oil, based in Framingham, Mass., distributes motor fuels through a network of more than 2,000 branded gasoline retail centers, 12 proprietary oil terminals and a network of more than 50 other supply terminals.Click hereto read the first part of this report.
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