LAWRENCEVILLE, Ga. — Majors Management LLC has acquired Tri-State Petroleum Corp.’s 25 company-operated petroleum marketing and convenience stores, eight wholesale dealer accounts and two commercial fuels bulk plants located in the tri-state region of western Pennsylvania, northern West Virginia and eastern Ohio. The seller is exiting the industry.
Tri-State Petroleum, Wheeling, W.Va., is a family-owned convenience store operator and wholesale distributor of motor fuels in Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Edward Coyne I and Elizabeth Coyne founded Tri-State in 1974 as an Atlantic Richfield distributor of tires, batteries and automotive accessories. In 1976, the company began barging fuel oil through its Wheeling terminal and bulk plant facility that served chemical, coal and other industrial customers throughout the upper Ohio Valley region.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the company expanded into retail fuel marketing by leveraging supply contracts with BP, Exxon, CITGO and Sunoco and acquiring two portfolios from BP in the mid-1990s, including company-operated c-stores and wholesale dealer accounts. The company continued its path of growth in 2002, when it acquired 18 petroleum marketing and c-store locations from ExxonMobil Corp.
Edward and Elizabeth’s children, Colleen McGlinn, Erin Merrick, Sheila Romanek and Edward Coyne II, all joined the business during the 1980s and 1990s and continue to manage the company in various executive roles. In 2012, Tri-State entered into a new branded supply agreement with Marathon Petroleum Corp., rebranding the majority of its petroleum marketing assets and has become a leading Marathon distributor and convenience retailer in its trade area, it said.
Matrix Capital Markets Group Inc. provided merger-and-acquisition advisory services to Tri-State, which included valuation advisory, marketing the business through a confidential, structured sale process and negotiation of the transaction.
“Two generations of the Coyne family have worked tirelessly for nearly 50 years to build Tri-State into one of the leading petroleum marketers in the eastern Ohio Valley,” said Spencer Cavalier, co-head of Richmond, Va.-based Matrix’s Downstream Energy & Convenience Retail Investment Banking Group, who managed the transaction with David Corbett, director, Martin McElroy, senior associate, and James Mickelinc, analyst.
The family has “made the important decision to pursue an exit from the business,” Cavalier said.
Majors Management, based in Lawrenceville, Ga., develops, services and supports leased c-stores in the Southeast. It is a distributor of branded motor fuels and partners with petroleum brands including Chevron, CITGO, Exxon, Mobil, Phillips 76, Shell, Sunoco, Texaco and Valero. Its markets include Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, Louisiana, Ohio, Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina, North Carolina and Arkansas.
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